Editorial | Cheering free movement

It’s rare that Caribbean Community (CARICOM) nationals have an opportunity to celebrate the positive outcome of a good idea proposed by the region’s leaders. That’s because they, too often, do not implement their plans.

This time, however, The Gleaner is happy to cheer, and congratulate, the community, or at least some of its members, for following through on and completing something that was agreed upon, which has the potential to yield significant benefit for the regional integration movement.

On October 1, the governments of Dominica, Barbados, Belize and St Vincent and the Grenadines formally launched an arrangement for the free movement of their citizens, on a reciprocal basis, between each other’s territory.

In other words, since Wednesday, a Belizean has had the right to travel to, say, St Vincent, to live and work indefinitely in that country, with no requirement other than the proof of his or her Belizean citizenship. So, there is no need (other than registration) for residency or work permits, or for a so-called CARICOM Skills Certificate, covering any of the dozen education or jobs criteria that is required by a regional person who wishes to live and work in another territory, outside of the participating quarter.

Further, a citizen of a participating country, living in another, has a right to public health services, and their children to at least primary education.

The necessary caveat in this scheme is the right of participating countries to exclude, or remove, people who pose security threats, or are likely to become burdens on the receiving state.

SIGNIFICANT

The implementation of this agreement, as this newspaper highlighted previously, is significant on two fronts.

One is that it is the first of the arrangements that allows CARICOM, or more correctly, a critical mass (three) of its members, to proceed with a project on the basis of what the community euphemistically calls “enhanced cooperation”. Which is really a practical way of getting around what CARICOM’s critics, and even ardent supporters, lament as the community’s chronic “implementation deficit”.

Roughly analogous to the arrangement the Europeans refer to in their integration partnership as “variable geometry”, “enhanced cooperation” essentially allows for the growth of a multi-track CARICOM, where “coalitions of the willing” may form to proceed with policies and projects on which all are agreed, but some member states are not yet ready to start. The laggards can catch up later.

The great value of this is that the entire community does not have to be held back, waiting for everybody to get on board, when some are ready to move. It could therefore help to break, or loosen, the logjam that has slowed the regional integration project.

The second potential gain from Wednesday’s action by the quarter, is the fillip it might give to the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME) – the community’s aspiration to transform itself into a genuinely seamless economic space. CARICOM has been working at this, in fits and starts, for two decades.

MOVE FREELY

A genuine single market presumes, among other things, the right of labour and capital to move freely within the prescribed economic space.

Some headway has been made on the latter. On the former, CARICOM, at best, has been tentative – sporadically expanding the list of professions covered by its skilled professionals regime. Even some countries in the seven-member Organisation of East Caribbean States (OECS), all of which are part of CARICOM, are skittish about expanding their full free-movement regime to include the entire community, despite having such an arrangement among themselves.

The argument of these OECS members, as has been articulated by Antigua and Barbuda, is that they could not bear the economic and social impact of an influx of CARICOM nationals the arrangement might bring.

But in the near decade and half since the OECS launched its economic union, including free movements for its citizens, none of its members appears to have sunk under the pressure of immigrants from partner countries. Now, Dominica and St Vincent and the Grenadines clearly see value in opening their borders to other CARICOM members, once they are ready to reciprocate, as do Barbados and Belize.

It is surprising, and disappointing, that other CARICOM members, especially larger ones such as Guyana and Jamaica, which face a deficit of skills, are not part of the enterprise.

In the case of Jamaica, where economic growth has long been anaemic (unlike Guyana, which is in the midst of an oil-driven boom), it is unlikely that the island would be overrun by immigrants from the Eastern Caribbean. Rather, the island could possibly benefit from the skills that might come. And in any event, a substantial number of Jamaicans live and work in the Eastern and Southern Caribbean.

More than a year ago, the Jamaican Government said it was committed to the full free-movement initiative, but was working out a few kinks before it got on board. The Holness administration should report on the status of its effort.