“Barbados, Belize, Dominica, and St Vincent and the Grenadines have agreed to let citizens of all four countries move, live, and work freely across each other’s borders,” reports The Doomslayer.
The Guardian reports:
A historic EU-style free movement agreement comes into force in four Caribbean countries on Wednesday, in a deal which officials hope will stem the flow of skilled professionals leaving the region for North America and Europe.
The agreement between Barbados, Belize, Dominica and St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) follows decades of discussions and negotiations among members of the Caribbean Community (Caricom) – a regional grouping of 15 member countries.
The ‘full free movement’ will allow nationals of the four countries to reside, work and remain indefinitely in any of the countries without the need for a work or residency permit…..
Some residents of Barbados, the richest of the four countries, are opposed to the agreement. Anthony Roberts, a shop attendant in Barbados, worried that the agreement
would mean more competition for jobs. But University of the West Indies student, Darren Clarke, 21, said it was “a step in the right direction.” “People should be able to move around and contribute wherever their skills are needed. I like the idea that I could one day take a job in Jamaica or Guyana without having to jump through a million hoops,” he said. Michelle Thorne, 46, an air traffic controller in St Vincent and the Grenadines is concerned that Vincentians would be enticed by higher salaries [in Barbados] and the country would lose critical workforce.
Barbados is much richer than Belize. But not much richer than the other two countries that are part of the agreement, Dominica and St. Vincent and the Grenadines. In 1990, Barbados was three times as rich as St. Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG), but today, St. Vincent and the Grenadines have a per capita income almost as high as Barbados. So it seems unlikely that there will be a flood of people leaving St. Vincent for Barbados. Barbados has a higher per capita income than Dominica, but it is cheaper to live in Dominica, so Dominica is not that much poorer than Barbados.
In Africa, Kenya has gotten rid of the visa requirement for visitors from other African countries. Kenya is richer than its neighbors, but its most populous neighbor, Ethiopia, is no longer as dreadfully poor as it used to be, and its other main neighbor, Tanzania, is not as much poorer than Kenya as it used to be. Kenya’s neighbor Somalia is still dirt poor, though.
