#SpeakingOut – What kind of CARICOM?

I was sent an article that was highlighted in various Caribbean publications reporting on the sending back of 15 Haitians from Grenada via Trinidad and Tobago to their homeland. Apparently, the Haitians had not applied for refugee status but were entering the country as tourists and had insufficient funds to pay for their stay. As reported in the media, Prime Minister of Grenada, Dickon Mitchell, who is responsible for National Security, declared that it was ascertained that these CARICOM Nationals would have been “a charge on the public purse if they were in fact permitted to enter the state”. This is regrettable and shameful. 

Why is the assumption made that they will be a charge on the public purse? Is there nothing in the entire country that they can do to earn their stay there? This is short-sighted and anti-CARICOM, especially knowing the turmoil that these brothers and sisters are facing. In the Russian-Ukraine conflict, the surrounding countries are absorbing thousands of immigrants, but we in the Caribbean turn our backs on our own. 

It is time that CARICOM acts in Haiti and stops talking and waiting for the industrialised nations that created and perpetuate the same turmoil there everlastingly to act. At the political level, there is much talk but little on the ground action, but surprisingly, at the behest of the larger nations up north and elsewhere, these same CARICOM nations were able to coordinate efforts to get vaccines and personnel across the Caribbean to fulfill “requirements” during the COVID-19 pandemic and in the face of St. Vincent’s recent volcanic eruption, by sending people to other islands. Retrospectively, we sent troops to Grenada and elsewhere when
Uncle Sam demanded, as “peacekeepers,” under American directorship. 

The region does not lack the capacity to make things right in Haiti. This is our sacred duty and responsibility as brothers and sisters to each other. But no, we cannot do it for Haiti, but we can stand up for Ukraine. These brave people who set the standard for all enslaved people and the world in 1804, by establishing their independence back then, must now be disregarded by the international community and the world and treated as pariahs because we are cowards and choir boys and choir girls. Truly horrible indeed. Is this the kind of CARICOM community we are building?  

Ian A. Marshall