BASSETERRE, St. Kitts - AS from August 1, 2011, we are free to move about, live and work in any of the six independent islands of the OECS. Yet, even though this new freedom came on Emancipation Day, the significance of it has not really taken root.
The OECS Secretariat in Castries, St. Lucia gave the proclamation via a press release on Aug.5, 2011 declaring that freedom of movement in the OECS was now a fact of life. It said:
“Monday August 1, 2011 heralded the commencement of full free movement of OECS citizens throughout the six independent countries of the Organisation. Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St. Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines agreed that, from that date, they would permit OECS citizens to enter their territories and remain for an indefinite period in order to work, establish businesses, provide services or reside.
Free movement of OECS citizens is one of the fundamental aspects of the Revised Treaty of Basseterre establishing the OECS Economic Union, which entered into force on January 21, 2011. On that date the OECS Authority of Heads of Government agreed that August 01, 2011 would be the implementation date for the regime for the complete free movement of citizens of participating Member States.”
Somehow this new freedom has not elicited the type of joy that the freedom of the original Emancipation brought, and initial reactions, when the subject was broached, were predominantly negative.
On African Liberation Day we hear a lot of talk of how much we are all brothers and sisters; that we may have come from the same tribe and were just dropped off at different islands. Yet the news that we can reunite freely has not been greeted with much glee.
We cannot be blamed for fiercely guarding our turf. It is a protective mechanism that is inherent in all animal species. A dog will urinate on every lamppost, fire hydrant and car wheel signalling by smell that this is his territory…so be aware!
Drug lords guard their turfs violently…but our island’s man-made boundaries are a legacy of our colonial masters as they set about carving up Africa and the Caribbean, thus making the ‘new world’ their turf – theirs to control.
Africans once migrated all over Africa to escape encroaching drought, or sought to avoid too much inbreeding by carrying out inter-tribal marriages.
In Africa, it is the use of the land that signalled ownership, not the possession of piece of paper in some government vault.
But as man-made boundaries were ‘erected’, populations were trapped in their tribal compounds to suffer drought, famine and disease without being able to migrate naturally. They no longer had the freedom of moving to “higher ground”.
How will we use this new found freedom?
Will it be used to perpetrate insularity or will we allow it to take us on the path of Caribbean unity?
In each island, nationals fear that there will be the infiltration of low level immigrants who will compete with ‘belongers’ for jobs or who will criminalise their countries. And yet persons from these islands migrate to the United States of America and embrace and live comfortably in such an environment.
The history of migration has always been running parallel with history of labour. Immigrants take whatever jobs are available, hence a country is able to fill posts that many locals shunned as they sat around waiting for a job to bring them the pie in the sky.
In St. Kitts, Vincentian and Guyanese workers were welcomed to take jobs on our sugar plantations that we appeared unable to occupy.
We now must shift our thinking to visualise that we will also be able to attract the best and brightest at any level of the labour market if our social ambience is attractive. Competition always makes us better at what we do.
Caribbean economist Dennis Morrison has stated publicly that the implementation of the OECS Economic Union, which includes in it freedom of movement, is timely, and opined that the integration movement of CARICOM must take a different approach for it to work.
With a united currency and a united Court system among other shared examples of functional cooperation, the OECS could now again lead the way with the removal of insular barriers and the erection of economics targets that could lead to a new united Caribbean.
This will take us to the next level and will signal the coming of age of a mature economic approach to our fate and future?
Are we not one people? Or do we only hypocritically declare it?
