The announcement that Grenada and St Lucia are taking steps to join four other Caribbean Community (CARICOM) members in their free-movement regime is an important development in advancing CARICOM’s move towards a genuine single market and economy – the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME).
Moreover, it further vindicates the 2022 decision by regional leaders to amend the CARICOM treaty to allow for a multitrack approach to project and policy implementation within the Community. It also suggests that fears, harboured in some states, that they might be overwhelmed by the free movement of labour within the Community are largely unfounded. Since Barbados, Belize, Dominica, and St Vincent and the Grenadines inaugurated full free movement among themselves last October, fewer than 1,000 people have used the regime, according to Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley.
At the same time, the declaration of intent by Grenada and St Lucia to open their borders, without restrictions, to nationals of reciprocating CARICOM members, reprises questions about Jamaica’s plans on this matter. The Holness administration has said that it is committed to the idea. There is, however, little evidence that Kingston is undertaking the technical work necessary for Jamaica’s transition to the regime.
A long-standing criticism of CARICOM is that it has been too slow in implementing its decisions or that it has done so in a piecemeal fashion. Among the areas to which this complaint applies is the right of labour to move freely within the Community, a critical plank in establishing a genuine single market and economy.
Until the four-member free-movement pact was established, heads of government periodically carved out professions whose practitioners had the right to work freely within the Community. Even then, however, citizens first had to obtain a CARICOM Skills Certificate to facilitate their cross-border movement.
What changed was the treaty amendment – dubbed the Enhanced Cooperation Protocol – which allows three of the Community’s 15 members to proceed with arrangements among themselves, provided they receive the agreement of three-quarters of the membership and keep the door open for others to join.
It is on this basis that Barbados, Belize, Dominica, and St Vincent and the Grenadines launched their free-movement scheme, allowing nationals of one country to live and work in another without the need for work permits. This migration comes with contingent rights, including access to primary healthcare and primary and secondary education for their children.
Following their summit in St Lucia earlier this month, CARICOM leaders announced that they had been notified by the host country and Grenada that both are actively taking steps to participate in the full free movement of CARICOM nationals.
Separately, Ms Mottley disclosed that Grenada had submitted its letter signalling its intention to join the arrangement, and that St Lucia had also indicated a willingness to begin the process.
Ms Mottley told reporters that she expects other Community members to come on board gradually, much as CARICOM itself evolved over its more than a half-century of existence. According to the Barbadian prime minister, the free-movement regime has, so far, proved to be “a good experience” and that fewer “than 1,000 people” have used it. This is largely consistent with the experience of members of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), whose economic union has facilitated full free movement for more than 15 years.
The arrangement, Ms Mottley said, has not opened “the floodgates”. Barbados, which faces a skills deficit, has, instead, been the principal beneficiary, receiving the largest influx of residents.
“… One of the reasons why we signed on to the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas in the first place was to facilitate the movement of people to bridge the fact that inherently, our population numbers are low, and, by extension, our skills levels are low,” Ms Mottley said.
Like much of the region, Barbados, with a population of about 283,000, a birth rate below replacement level, and an ageing population, faces the risk of not having a sufficiently large working-age population in the coming decades to drive economic growth and generate the surplus needed to support its elderly citizens.
It is an issue with which Jamaica must also contend. Not only are people over 60 the fastest-growing segment of the island’s population, but low and declining productivity levels, despite near-full employment, have also kept economic growth weak.
Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness has raised the issue of importing labour to close the skills gap, but there is little evidence of the administration’s intention to address the matter first through the institution where Jamaica already has treaty obligations – CARICOM.
In 2024, after regional leaders pledged at CARICOM’s 50th-anniversary celebrations to implement full free movement, Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade Minister Kamina Johnson Smith said Jamaica would come on board once the necessary legislative and administrative framework was in place.
“We continue to put the necessary legislative, administrative, health and security measures in place so that, when Jamaica moves to implement full free movement, it will be done in a manner that is orderly, effective, and sustainable,” Prime Minister Holness said when the four member states instituted their regime.
It is unlikely that Jamaica anticipates a massive influx of CARICOM nationals if it opens its borders. Over several decades, the movement has largely been in the opposite direction: Jamaicans relocating to other Caribbean countries
