BRIDGETOWN, Barbados – The first week of the Full Free Movement regime saw a total of ten nationals of Belize, Dominica and St Vincent and the Grenadines being accorded“indefinite stay status” in Barbados and going on to claim their right to reside indefinitely and work in Barbados by registering with our ministry of labour and social security.

The ministry of labour and social security will now process those registrations and – all things being equal – will issue a“Full Free Movement Certificate” to each national. And so, we can say that this pioneering Full Free Movement venture is well on its way!

The four pioneering CARICOM member-states – Belize, Dominica, St Vincent and the Grenadines, and Barbados – can also take great pride in the fact that they have made a critical breakthrough in the decades-long process of constructing our all-important CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME).

It has long been acknowledged that if our small Caribbean nations and companies are going to be able to compete effectively in an increasingly hostile and competitive global market-place, we will have to construct a CSME that permits us to treat our several national economies as“one single domestic space”, and to more easily and effectively bring together and make the best use of our combined resources.

Thus far, we have put CARICOM regimes in place to facilitate the movement of business, capital and some categories of skills across our Caribbean Community. Now, with this new four nation Full Free Movement Regime we are taking the movement of CARICOM citizens beyond the restrictions imposed by stipulated skill categories to a full freedom for all of our citizens.

Indeed, the only exceptions to and exclusions from the new regime will be persons who“are a threat to national security and/ or to public health”, and persons who“are likely to become a charge on the public purse”.

Click here for FAQs On Enhanced Cooperation In Free Movement Of CARICOM Nationals

The new Full Free Movement Regime is therefore all about persons who have opted to move for good and wholesome reasons – to pursue new career and life opportunities, and to make a constructive contribution to their new host society.

The question has also arisen as to whether Vincentian, Dominican and Belizean nationals who become resident in Barbados will be able to vote in national elections in Barbados.

Well, the simple answer is that they – like all other persons who migrate to Barbados – will have to earn and qualify for the right to vote under the existing legal framework –namely, the Representation of the People Act , Chapter 12 of the Laws of Barbados.

And since nationals of St Vincent, Dominica and Belize are all“Commonwealth citizens”, it means that their right to vote will be governed by Section 7 (1) (b) of the Act.

This Section of the Act states as follows:-

“Subject to this Act and any enactment imposing any disqualification for registration as an elector, a person is qualified to be registered as an elector for a constituency if, on the qualifying date, he

(b) is a Commonwealth citizen (other than a citizen of Barbados) who has resided in Barbados for a period of at least three (3) years immediately before the qualifying date”

(And Section 2 of the Act explains that the“qualifying date” means the date on which the person applies to be registered as an elector)

So there is a minimum three-year residence requirement before any such incoming national can qualify to become an“elector” or“voter”.

Those first ten incoming nationals would therefore first have to undergo a three-year- period of residence in Barbados before they could apply to the Electoral and Boundaries Commission to be placed on the list of electors. They would then be placed on our national electoral list – a list that contained some 264,000 names as recently as 2022.

But we should not permit little titillating partisan discourses about voting to distract us from the core fundamental reason why we need such a Full Free Movement Regime!

The stark reality is that all of our CARICOM member states are losing far too many of our most valuable and productive citizens to outward migration to metropolitan countries in North America and Europe. This is the proverbial“Brain Drain”.

Barbados, for example, is afflicted by two very serious interlocking problems:-

• Barbados has the demographic profile of a developed country – a very low birth rate; a population living longer; an increasingly ageing population; and not a large enough proportion of the population in the relatively young, economically active age range to help support and sustain the increasing number of retirees.

• The majority of Barbadian emigrants are persons with a tertiary level education. In other words, Barbados is losing the educated and skilled people it most needs for its national development – once again, the proverbial“Brain Drain”.

If we are serious about combating these crucial developmental issues we urgently have to take steps to make life in our Caribbean Community so attractive and rewarding for our youth – especially the most educated and skilled youth – that they opt to remain in the region and contribute to its development.

That is really the fundamental reason for the Full Free Movement Regime!

However, as attractive and helpful as the Full Free Movement Regime may prove to be for our young people, we cannot stop there! We now have to make further use of our creative intellect and come up with other complementary initiatives to make our Caribbean region even more attractive to our youth.

Let us do the things that are necessary to make our Barbadian youth feel that Barbados and the rest of the Caribbean Community is truly their“home” – and that it is a“home” that is second to none in terms of its attractiveness and its rewards for productive work.

We must give our youth a Caribbean Community in which they are free to stretch themselves and to roam without undue obstacle or hindrance in search of career and life opportunities.

Ultimately, this is what our Caribbean integration movement is all about.

The post Reflections on first week of full free movement & voting concerns appeared first on Caribbean News Global .

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