Caribbean Community (Caricom) leaders are meeting this week in St. Lucia to discuss a number of key issues, including the growing pressure from the U.S. to comply with a series of burdensome and uncomfortable political edicts. Chief among them are demands from the Trump administration for a significant number of regional member nations to accept so-called third country deportees or those who are being sent to countries where they were not born or naturalized.
Several leaders say the issue has triggered serious political stress in societies, with Prime Minister Gaston Browne of Antigua, for example, vowing that his federation with Barbuda would not accept any LGBTQIA+ individuals because “we have enough of those here,” he recently claimed on his weekend radio show.
Browne’s remarks come amid the growing U.S. pressure on some countries to seemingly convert some member states into dumping grounds for deportees the U.S. wants to see the back of.
As an indication of how tense the negotiations have been, Browne even suggested that recent non-immigration restrictions imposed on his country from January were done to pressure authorities into bowing to the will of Washington. He is adamant about this.
“I have no doubt in my mind that the restriction that was issued on Antigua as of the end of last year, effective January of this year, was as a result of this issue,” he said. “From all indications, that was issued probably to bully us into signing. I’m not going to willingly drink the poison and die. You have to shoot me,” likening the situation to the U.S. putting a gun to his head to force the government into accepting its proposals. “We are not averse to signing but it has to be a sensible agreement.”
Numbers that have become public in recent weeks range from Jamaica being offered 10,000 such deportees to no more than 14 in one year, as suggested by Antigua. Browne said the U.S. wants to send 120 deportees per year, but accepting such a large number would be political suicide and irresponsible because available resources would be a problem. “We do not want people who are criminals,” Browne said. “We don’t want people who are sick. We do not want anyone who is going to become a charge.”
Others, like oil- and gas-rich Guyana with its booming economy, say they are willing to sign on to the third country nationals program, especially if those being dumped on the nation have engineering and other technical skills. Another is Dominica, whose leadership had rushed to tie up an agreement with the U.S., but it is not clear if doing so would appease the U.S. and entice it into lifting similar visa restrictions as with Antigua.
Other pressures governments are facing, meanwhile, also relate to a concerted effort by Washington to force nations to virtually dismantle the decades-old Cuban medical brigade program through which Cuba has been sending thousands of doctors, nurses, and biomedical engineers to the region to bolster health services since the 1970s.
Since taking office early last year, the administration has been badgering countries to abandon the shared payment system for these professionals, charging that Havana has been taking home the bulk of individual earnings by paying them no more than 20% of monthly earnings while pocketing the majority.
Leading anti-Cuba advocate Secretary of State Marco Rubio had dubbed the payment system as human trafficking and modern-day slave labor, forcing Havana to recall hundreds of professionals back home as governments cancelled the original payment system, creating significant shortages in some health sectors. Some nations like Antigua, the Bahamas, and Jamaica say they have been forced to begin global searches for replacement professionals.
Other items expected to attract discussion at the summit include efforts to make Britain and former European slave-trading nations pay reparations for slavery and indigenous genocide; free travel and single-market problems in the region; high import fuel prices; and related inflation, as well as crime and security issues.
