Moontown

Andy Johnson

ON THE DEFENSIVE: Barbados Prime Minister David Thompson, left, makes a point at the Caricom summit in Georgetown, Guyana, earlier this month.

BY FAR the hottest topic at this month’s Caricom summit in Georgetown, Guyana, was internal migration in the Caribbean.

The Barbados Prime Minister, David Thompson, had come armed with a dossier-facts and figures fortified by a historical perspective on the integration movement itself and about his country’s proud record of commitment to it.

He went on an aggressive defence of the actions he initiated to “manage” and “balance” what his year-and-a-half-old administration sees as a threat of imbalance and unmanageability of willy-nilly migration to his country.

A near siege welcome awaited him, both from the Guyanese public in general, and from some of his colleagues who appeared hostile to his government’s efforts at containment.

It was a campaign issue for the January 2008 election which brought him to office in Bridgetown, but he was being accused at home and across the region for approving acts of inhumanity to fellow Caribbean nationals and for “cherry picking” at the issues he would support - the Caribbean Single Market and Economy.

Pleading not guilty on each count, Thompson drew first blood at a news conference in the Guyanese capital on July 1, more than 30 hours before the summit’s opening ceremony, at which his host the Guyanese president would repeat the accusation about “mistreatment”.

To a room packed with reporters mostly from the Guyanese media, at the Cara Lodge hotel in the Guyanese capital, Prime Minister Thompson defended his government’s attempt to get a handle on illegal, uncontrolled migration. He denied he was targeting Guyanese nationals in general and worse yet Indo-Guyanese in particular.

Sufficient material in his prepared text was there to back up his early assertion of “an unswerving commitment to the tenets and ideals of the various treaties in Caricom,” to which his government was signatory.

“Barbados’ record of support for and contributions to the building of our regional community are unparalleled,” he said.

Entitled “Pathways to Progress,” the manifesto of Thompson’s Democratic Labour Party for the election in 2008 promised Barbadians a transformation that would “meet the real needs of the people.” Item 17 in that contract with the Bajan people envisaged “opportunities and rights for all”, regarding “Employment and Enterprise”.

Barbadian workers were considered to be facing competition from foreign workers who, for the most part, came from within Caricom, attracted by employment opportunities and the improved standard of living that Barbados offers.

“These workers may initially accept lower wages and less agreeable working conditions than their Barbadian counterparts, thereby affording some employers the opportunity to bypass the Barbadian worker. The potential for erosion of employment opportunities of the local labour force is obvious,” the document told the Barbadian voter.

For this reason, Thompson’s DLP promised to introduce policies to manage immigration “in the interest of the local labour force and the foreign worker who may otherwise be subject to exploitation”. And it vowed to “increase investment in education and training to improve the productivity of the Barbadian labour force, and to make our workers more competitive”.

Whichever way it is being swung, the Bajan amnesty for undocumented West Indians living and working in Barbados was meant to speak to this part of the bargain.

In his statement to reporters on July 1, Thompson said he wanted to counter what he saw as interpretations “through the prism of emotive rhetoric, distortions of fact or misrepresentations of what is or is not the spirit and letter of the revised Treaty of Chaguaramas”.

This is the document that made way for the institutionalised free movement of Caricom nationals, but which has been subject to massive misunderstandings and misinterpretations.

Article 46 of that revised treaty had listed five categories of Caricom nationals who would qualify initially for “free movement”. These were listed as university graduates, media workers, sports persons, artistes and musicians. Over the years since 1989, the Caricom heads of government have added four more categories by virtue of decisions taken at summit meetings. These are teachers and registered nurses, holders of associate degrees and equivalents, and artisans possessing Caribbean Vocational Qualifications.

“Barbados is honouring its obligations in all nine categories,” Thompson said proudly at the Cara Lodge conference, contrasting this with the declaration that “there are some member states which have not moved beyond the minimum five.”

There appeared to be simply no answer to any of these assertions at the Georgetown summit, despite the claims by the Guyanese president that his people were being “mistreated” at the hands of Barbadian immigration officials.

From 29 items listed under 13 subject headings, the conference communique devoted 14 lines to the issue of “free movement”, leaving observers to guess at where any of them either found fault with the Barbados policy in action, or heralded any resolution of the matter at hand.

“Heads of Government re-affirmed the goal of free movement of persons as expressed in Article 45 of the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas and that free movement is an essential element of the CSME but given the current economic and financial crisis, its full implementation at this point in time will be challenging for some member states,” the communique said in its opening statement on this issue. They further recognised that the free movement of all nine categories of persons agreed upon had been “implemented satisfactorily” and they “re-affirmed” that migration was a human right “circumscribed by national law”. Such migrants should be accorded “humane treatment” the communique said, and that there was agreement on the importance of training and sensitisation of immigration officers, “on the implementation of the region’s approach to free movement and hassle free travel”.

In the context of the leaders’ stated recognition that despite current challenges, the free movement of all the stated nine categories of eligible Caricom nationals has “generally been implemented satisfactorily”, questions remain about just what constitutes “hassle-free travel”.

On the contention about “inhumane treatment”, Thompson told the July 1 news conference that this was “not the Barbadian way” and that any officers found to be violating people’s rights would be dealt appropriately. It was not, in other words, any part of his government’s policy in action.