In late March and early May, Caribbean Community (Caricom) leaders sat down with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio to discuss a bag full of issues, including threats to cancel the visas of regional officials who are engaged in or linked to hiring Cuban medical professionals in the bloc.
Based on reports from returning heads of government, the talks went well, with some nations pledging to amend the payment system to ensure doctors, nurses, biomedical engineers, and others receive their full, rather than part, payment from Caribbean administrations — a decades-old system the U.S. has railed against because a significant portion goes to the sanctioned Cuban government.
Now, just weeks after nations like the Bahamas, Antigua, and Guyana announced plans to tweak the emoluments system, some regional member nations are again in the sights of the Trump administration, but this time, the threat is way more serious than visa revocation plans of targeted officials connected to the Cuban program.
In recent days, a leaked memo widely reported by the Washington Post, Reuters, and other outlets is now pointing to plans by Rubio to restrict travel for nationals of several mostly Eastern Caribbean sub-grouping nations that offer golden passports and citizenship to foreigners who pay a cash fee, invest in real estate or other development projects, and become locals.
The European Union and the U.S., for example, have periodically complained about the alleged inability of these countries to properly probe the backgrounds of people who obtain these passports and citizenship through the citizenship by investment programs (CIP) that are offered by St. Kitts, Antigua, Dominica, St. Lucia, Dominica, and Grenada.
Neighboring St. Vincent has steadfastly refused to pursue this route to garner development aid to replace taxes from intra-regional free trade amid the collapse of the banana export regime to the EU and other revenue streams that are no longer available. Grenada, which the U.S. invaded back in 1983, has escaped this list for reasons that are still unclear.
Over the years, leaders have pointed to the hundreds of millions of dollars raised from this scheme for development purposes, while pointing to the negligible cases of recipients who turn out to be frauds from dubious backgrounds. Still, Washington has these nations and others — mostly from Africa — in its sights for travel bans.
“The department has identified 36 countries of concern that might be recommended for full or partial suspension of entry if they do not meet established benchmarks and requirements within 60 days,” the memo stated. “These concerns included a lack of a competent/co-operative government to produce reliable identity documents. Another was ‘questionable security’ of that country’ passport.”
State also grumbled about the reluctance of some of these countries to accept their own deportees from the U.S. as reasons for being lined up for punishment.
Some regional leaders, like long-serving Dominican Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit, have responded cautiously. Skerrit said over the weekend that authorities from western nations and the Caribbean have been talking about this issue since 2023, but no formal notification of impending plans has been communicated to the region.
Dangling a carrot to the nations amid the threats, the department has given those countries named in the memo signed by Rubio two months to fix areas of concerns, including due diligence and background ability checks, according to published reports. The U.S. has also suggested that citizens from the named countries usually overstay their visas in the U.S. in greater than normal numbers, an accusation that Caribbean governments are expected to strenuously dispute.
The countries awaiting their fate include Angola, Benin, Bhutan, Burkina Faso, Cabo Verde, Cambodia, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Dominica, Ethiopia, Egypt, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kyrgyzstan, Liberia, Malawi, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, South Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Tonga, Tuvalu, Uganda, Vanuatu, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.