Migration in the Caribbean

A closer look at the Caribbean’s migratory systems

Similar to patterns of migration worldwide, migrants within the Caribbean tend to originate in countries with lower standards of living and fewer opportunities, moving to more advanced economies with more employment opportunities

Challenges and opportunities of migration in the Caribbean

By Valerie Lacarte - Ana María Saiz - Jordi Amaral - Diego Chaves-González - Jeremy Harris

Migration has long been part of the fabric of Caribbean nations’ experience.  But while Caribbean migration is often discussed in the context of out-migration to the United States, Canada, and European countries, movement to and within the Caribbean is an equally important part of this story.  In recent decades, due in great part to climate change, natural disasters, and shifts in global mobility patterns, the migration landscape in the Caribbean has also changed significantly.

To provide governments, stakeholders, and external partners interested in strengthening the region’s capacity to accommodate changing migration patterns, the Inter-American Development Bank and the Migration Policy Institute have partnered to provide a policy review on migration in the Caribbean.

The report Migration, Integration, and Diaspora Engagement in the Caribbean: A Policy Review provides those interested in human mobility across Latin America and the Caribbean with a general overview of the Caribbean region’s extra- and intraregional migration trends, institutional frameworks, and the challenges and opportunities that new migration flows present for its development and regional integration.

Recent changes in the migratory flows in the Caribbean

In 2020, there were an estimated 859,400 intraregional and 745,700 extraregional immigrants living in Caribbean countries.  The intraregional share of migrants grew from 46% in 2000 to 56% in 2020.

The intraregional share and origins of immigrants vary across countries.  In the nine primary countries studied in the report—The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, the Dominican Republic, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago—immigrants from other Caribbean nations made up 63 percent of all immigrants in 2020.  Intraregional migration was most common in countries such as the Dominican Republic, Barbados, and The Bahamas, and Haitians were by far the largest group of immigrants across these countries, followed by Guyanese.

Extraregional migration in the Caribbean

In some countries, there are notable populations of immigrants from outside the region.  Venezuelans represent the second largest immigrant population (after Haitians) across the nine countries analyzed and are present in particularly large numbers in the Dominican Republic, Trinidad and Tobago, and Guyana.  Immigrants from the United States, the United Kingdom, China, and Canada were also present in many of these nine countries.

Intraregional migration in the Caribbean

Similar to patterns of migration worldwide, migrants within the Caribbean tend to originate in countries with lower standards of living and fewer opportunities, moving to more advanced economies with more employment opportunities.  As such, countries and territories with thriving tourism industries and higher incomes, such as The Bahamas, the British and U.S. Virgin Islands, the Turks and Caicos Islands, and Saint Kitts and Nevis, tend to attract nationals from Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Guyana, and Jamaica.  Moreover, a smaller number of high-skilled workers from countries such as Jamaica, Cuba, and Trinidad and Tobago tend to migrate to countries where they will have greater employment opportunities and receive higher incomes.

The impact of climate change and natural disasters on migration in the Caribbean

Climate change and natural disasters have been important drivers of internal, intraregional, and extraregional displacement in the Caribbean, and experts have expressed concerns that the frequency and impact of climate-related events are only likely to grow in the years to come.  In recent decades, the region has experienced several devastating hurricanes, which are likely the most impactful type of natural disaster in the region, in addition to earthquakes, tropical storms, floods, and drought, all of which have forced people to leave their homes.  These disasters are among the contributing factors to the increased migration of Caribbean nationals, particularly Haitians, to both South and North America.

Regional frameworks and institutions that facilitate mobility

Regional agreements and other forms of cooperation have also emerged as prominent features of mobility in the region.  As an example, under CARICOM’s Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME), nationals of CSME Member States benefit from six-month stays without a visa in other Community countries.  While these six-month stays do not come with work authorization, the CSME also includes a Skills Certificates regime that provides free mobility and works authorization for specific categories of workers.

Additionally, the region’s public university system, the University of the West Indies, has facilitated migration for educational purposes, mainly within the anglophone Caribbean.

Challenges for a stronger regional integration

The region’s unique free mobility regimes have, to some extent, helped facilitate the movement of displaced people and response workers during times of environmental crisis.  Yet a closer look at the Caribbean’s migratory systems indicates that, in most of the countries included in the study, these regimes are out of date, and this limits societies’ capacity to manage migration and successfully integrate new immigrants.

Diaspora engagement: An opportunity for the development of the Caribbean

A final, crucial dimension of migration policy in the Caribbean is diaspora engagement in efforts to further the region’s economic development.  Emigrants and their descendants are well-recognized for their role in channeling much-needed financial support to their families in the Caribbean through remittances, but their engagement with their countries of origin or ancestry can also take the form of business development and job creation, direct investment, and the strengthening of social and professional networks.  Moreover, the Caribbean diaspora has contributed to the region via the transfer of knowledge and skills, including through targeted initiatives that seek to counter the decades-old problem of brain drain.

Conclusion

As Caribbean nations continue to face important migration and development challenges, dialogue through the region’s established institutions provides a path towards adapting Caribbean migratory systems, while ensuring that migration policies account for the concerns of sending and receiving countries.

Source 

Do Not Exclude Cuba from the Summit of the Americas

Cuba denounces U.S. government exclusion of Cuba from preparations for Ninth Summit of the Americas

Excerpts from statement to the press by Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla

I am obliged to denounce the fact that the U.S. government has decided to exclude the Republic of Cuba from preparations for the Ninth Summit of the Americas set to take place in Los Angeles, June 8-10; and is currently exerting extreme pressure on numerous governments in the region that have privately and respectfully opposed this exclusion.

The U.S. government is misleading the public and governments of the hemisphere by saying that it has not yet made decisions regarding invitations.

I respectfully urge Secretary of State (Anthony) Blinken to say honestly whether or not Cuba will be invited to the Ninth Summit of the Americas.

A central axis, according to preparations for the event, will be health.  And I must inform our people and international public opinion that there are currently negotiations underway, conducted in an unclear manner, with quite a few neoliberal elements, and many shortcomings, in relation to the real needs of the peoples regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, the structural causes of precarious health systems that have led to tragic consequences and caused an extremely high number of deaths in our hemisphere, including the United States of America, and have avoided substantial cooperation and basic financing to address these consequences, and are now negotiating in an opaque manner a so-called Health and Resilience Action Plan for the Americas through the year 2030.

I must note that these negotiations are being held, in an obscure manner, with the exclusion of Cuba and other member states of the Pan American Health Organization, which are participating in these processes, in violation of their own mandates.

Cuba has always, in a modest but altruistic and persistent fashion, provided the possibility for international cooperation in health, which has been recognized worldwide.

There are Latin American vaccines against COVID-19 which are Cuban. The medical brigades that responded to the COVID emergency in the region, in the hemisphere in more than 50 countries on the planet, have been Cuban.

It would be convenient to take into account during this process, and benefit our peoples, Cuban medical presence in confronting natural disasters and epidemics in the past, the provision of tens of thousands of medical scholarships for low-income Latin American, Caribbean and United States youth, the existence of the Latin American School of Medicine in Havana, Operation Miracle that returned the sight of millions of low-income persons, Cuba's ability to establish cooperation, transfer state-of-the-art technology, provide pharmaceutical products, vaccines and novel treatments, the ability to share advanced protocols and medicines in the field of health…


Another central axis of the Summit, from which Cuba is intended to be excluded, is emigration.  A document with a long title: Letter of Understanding on Migration Management and Protection of Migrants is also being negotiated behind the back of international, US, Latin American and Canadian public opinion.  It is a code that seeks to force Latin American and Caribbean States to repress migration, to absorb the migrants that the United States decides to process outside its territory, which incorporates elements of the racist, xenophobic and plundering U.S. vision of our migrants.  It does not address in any way the real causes of migration, but it does, however, offer palliatives, stimuli, financing and economic incentives to countries that send migrants to the U.S. and are closer to its borders, to attenuate this process.

With Cuba, however, his recipe is the extreme tightening of the blockade, causing deprivation to Cuban families, the application of Undersecretary Mallory's stark memorandum: "depressing wages, causing hunger, despair and the overthrow of the Government," is the American prescription in relation to Cuba…
The exclusion of Cuba from the Ninth Summit of the Americas would constitute a serious historical setback in relation to the two previous editions.  In Panama, in 2015, Army General Raúl Castro Ruz led the delegation from our island which participated on equal footing, and raised his firm, dissenting voice, but always serene, respectful and constructive…

A third axis of the Summit of the Americas is that of democracy and human rights.  In the obscure negotiations taking place today, the intention is to establish the Organization of American States to certify all elections in the region.  This is the same OAS of the coup in Bolivia, and the intention of the United States, historically responsible for coups in our region, and also responsible for the coups in recent decades against progressive governments.

How can a Summit take place, centered on democracy, having excluded, at the arbitrary whim of the host, certain countries of Latin America and the Caribbean?  Can anyone think of something more undemocratic?
The U.S. has no moral authority to set itself up as a model in this matter or to criticize others…

The Ninth Summit of the Americas could still be an opportunity if, in an inclusive manner and on equal terms for all countries, it debated, without exclusions and with sincere commitment, the most pressing problems that affect the continent.

Cuba supports the genuine efforts to promote dialogue, links and cooperation between Our America, the America of Bolivar and Martí, and the United States, between the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States and the United States government…

Cuba, which firmly defends the unity within the diversity of Our America, today expresses our profound gratitude to the peoples and governments that maintain a courageous, dignified, solidary position, demanding of the U.S. government that Cuba not be excluded from the Ninth Summit of the Americas.

Source

A dirty word or a global opportunity?

By Sir Ronald Sanders:

“Migration not infrequently gets a bad press. Negative stereotypes, portraying migrants as ‘stealing our jobs’ or ‘scrounging off the taxpayer’, abound in sections of the media and public opinion especially in time of recession”. That is the opening sentence of the United Nations Human Development Report 2009.

former Caribbean diplomat who publishes widely on small states in the global community. Reponses to: www.sirronaldsanders.com />The report goes on to say that “fears about migrants taking the jobs or lowering the wages of local people, placing an unwelcome burden on local services, or costing the taxpayer money, are generally exaggerated”. The Report asserts, “when migrants’ skills complement those of local people, both groups benefit” and it makes the point that “the policy response to migration can be wanting. Many governments institute increasingly repressive entry regimes, turn a blind eye to health and safety violations by employers, or fail to take a lead in educating the public on the benefits of immigration”.

Little wonder, then, that immigration in most countries has become a political problem. In the absence of factual information on the benefits of immigration to societies, the view prevails that immigration is harmful.

When some governments release figures on the number of migrants who have entered a country, there is seldom, if ever, a simultaneous release of the number of people who have left.

In many places, if the flow of migrants was mostly out and little in, the economies would soon be in trouble as the population shrinks resulting in fewer skills, a smaller labour force, less demand for goods and services and less money circulating in the economy.

The global flow on migrants is also vastly overestimated by the majority of the world’s people particularly because accurate information is not only sparse; it is simply not made available to the public. For example, the UN Report reveals that the global figure for international migrants in the world’s population has stayed at only 3 per cent over the past 50 years.

However, there are some regions of the world where outward migration has a peculiarly negative impact because of the type of people who migrate, and the Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM) is one such region where there is a heavy outflow of tertiary educated people to the developed countries particularly Britain, Canada and the United States. Commonwealth Secretariat figures show that among the CARICOM countries that have lost more than 75% of their tertiary educated graduates are Antigua and Barbuda, Belize, Dominica, Guyana, Grenada, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago.

Unless these countries can produce enough tertiary educated graduates to retain a sufficient number for their own development needs, not only will the public and private sectors suffer from a paucity of knowledge-based skills and entrepreneurial insights, but their economies will become uncompetitive and will decline. The case for more investment in education and human resource development is therefore compelling.

It is a case that should be developed by the CARICOM Secretariat and jointly advanced by CARICOM countries to the International Financial Institutions, such as the World Bank, and the developed countries that benefit from this migration, to make a significant grant contribution to education in the region.

There is, of course, another side to the immigration story, and that is remittances sent back home from migrants abroad. In the 53-nation Commonwealth, remittances have become extremely important. They are greater than official development assistance and second only to foreign direct investment (FDI). The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) reckons that total global remittances in 2008 were $328 billion as against official development assistance of $120 billion.

All CARICOM countries benefit from remittances. The leaders in 2008 in terms of remittances per head of population were Jamaica ($826), St Kitts-Nevis ($760), Barbados ($659), Grenada ($603), Dominica ($412), Guyana ($365) and Antigua and Barbuda ($305). But, it is clear that in 2009, the remittance figure declined indicating that immigrants were among the principal sufferers in the countries to which they had migrated. Many of them lost jobs or were constrained to accept lower wages and, thus, had less money to send back home. In this connection, while remittances are important to the economies of many Caribbean countries, active policies for attracting investment from the Caribbean Diaspora have to be developed for the medium term.

Within CARICOM, the problem of migration has become a vexed one in the context of the current global recession. As the 2009 UN Human Development Report stated: “The current recession has made migrants particularly vulnerable. Some destination country governments have stepped up the enforcement of migration laws in ways that can infringe on migrants’ rights”.

It is a human reaction to try to secure the interests of citizens over migrants at a time of crisis, particularly when the migrant community is substantial as in the cases in CARICOM of Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago. Even though the CARICOM Treaty acknowledges “Freedom of movement of People”, it is impractical to simply rely on that as a justification for migration. CARICOM ought to be considering a more practical and realistic approach to the issue until such time as a Single Market and Economy is fully completed.

One way of doing this would be to develop a regional mechanism under which there would be a partnership between countries of origin and destination, supervised by a Council of appropriate officials, to manage migration based on labour needs with full respect for the rights of workers and their families by the destination countries.

In early November, the former Prime Minister of Jamaica, P J Patterson, quietly began the Chairmanship of a Commission on Migration and Development. The Commission is an initiative of the Ramphal Centre in London, named after the Caribbean’s former Commonwealth Secretary-General, Shridath ‘Sonny’ Ramphal.

The Patterson Commission is in its fledgling stage and it is still be to be funded fully, but the meeting attended by representatives of the United Nations, the Commonwealth Secretariat and other multilateral organisations displayed every sign of new thinking on the issue.

The task before it is huge, but Patterson has the gravitas in the international community to make the Commission’s report a seminal document in the international discourse on how the issue of migration should be tackled to maximise its benefits.

caribbeannetnews

Bahamas Caribbean Blog International