Caribbean Court of Justice: Myrie's case and frustrated Caribbean development

Wilberne Persaud, financial Gleaner COLUMNIST

Take a look at CARICOM. How do member states compare? The table is instructive.

To my readers: do accept apologies for sharing numbers rather than a picture. I'm not unaware of the power of pictures being more expressive than a thousand words/numbers.

Problem however, is that Microsoft Excel drops the names of more than half the fifteen countries represented - they're so small as to be insignificant expressed pictorially as area proportions on charts the numbers generate.

Hanover, Jamaica's smallest parish, fills out comparative detail in the table above - the parish is bigger than eight CARICOM member states.

Consider column three labelled 'Per Cent of Total' area. A percentage number less than 1.00 indicates an area smaller than Hanover.

Population density at column four indicates variability with extremes: Barbados' 640 versus Guyana's three persons per square kilometre.

Should we consider estimates of per capita income we also find significant differences. Recourse to Caricom official statistics on its website guarantees frustration as data for most countries state: "to be updated".

Nevertheless, the available data from several sources, including the CIA Factbook, UNDP's Human Development Index, and others, paint a picture of diversity with Barbados and Antigua and Barbuda enjoying upper spots in several indices. Against this basic panorama we may consider implications of Shanique Myrie's case and its connection to frustrated Caribbean development.

Carifta, Caricom and, more recently, the CSME all represent attempts initiated by our governments to leverage the idea of regional integration absent political, federal integration.

entry denied

Indisputably, Myrie was denied entry into Barbados. Detained overnight, she was deported to Jamaica the following day. As the CCJ judgment notes: "Ms Myrie submits that her right to free movement in the community, more specifically her right to enter Barbados without any form of harassment, is based on Article 45 RTC (Revised Treaty of Chaguaramus) and a Decision of the Conference of Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community taken at their Twenty-Eighth Meeting ('the 2007 Conference Decision')."

The court considered the "substantive and procedural content of the right of entry into a member state. That right is part of the broader concept of free movement of Community nationals within the Community."

The CCJ judgment maintains that although "Article 45 RTC embodies that concept in aspirational terms, the right has to a great extent already been enshrined and fleshed out in the RTC itself." The right to entry is settled — at least pro tem.

"Member states undertook to 'provide for movement of Community nationals into and within (their) jurisdictions without harassment or the imposition of impediments (Article 46(2)(b) RTC), to the extent even that "the requirement for passports for Community nationals" should be eliminated (Article 46(2)(b)(i) RTC)."

This does not mean Caricom states cede jurisdiction and control at their borders. They most certainly do not! The CCJ's judgment deduced from Article 46(3) RTC that "the concept of free movement entails the right of Community nationals to have unrestricted access to, and movement within, the jurisdictions of the member states subject to such conditions as the public interest may require."

Myrie's case establishes that Caricom citizens may enter any member state for a period of six months subject to 'probable cause' relating to illegal activities like drug smuggling, prostitution or intent unlawfully to seek employment. That's the legal impact. What of the economic impact?

Spatial movement is a feature of all earth's life forms responding to life sustenance. Bees forage in a three-mile radius from their hive. Birds undertake spectacular migrations with the seasons, as do wildebeest across the Serengeti plains of Africa.

Humans, sadly, risk horrible passage to death in unsafe boats at extortionate cost to escape poverty, insecurity and war from places like Somalia to enter the European Union.

Here in the Caribbean, we lived through forced migrations of enslaved Africans to the plantations; indentured labour from India; movements of Chinese, Portuguese and Englishmen's indenture to Barbados curtailed by the sugar revolution of the 1650s.

migrations legendary

Nearer in time, consider Panama Canal construction and migrations of Barbadian and Jamaican workers to face malaria, among other life-threatening conditions. Caribbean migration to Britain in the 1950s is as legendary as "cricket lovely cricket at Lords where I saw it"!

The point is, apart from forced migrations undertaken by colonial powers, responses to war, famine and persecution, voluntary human migration is essentially an economic phenomenon.

Within Caricom, today's sending countries are predominantly Guyana and Jamaica; receiving countries predominantly Antigua and Barbuda and Barbados. Jamaica also benefits from Guyanese teachers of math and science who don't mind 'living in country'.

In the recent past, the pull was labour shortage whatever its genesis, aligned with the capitalist drive for profit — whether acquired through lawful or unlawful means. Benefits abound to some in both sending and receiving countries as does concern, anxiety and alarm amongst populations of receiving countries.

The fear is prostitution, illegal drugs, behaviours associated with the latter and quite reasonably, carrying capacity of health-care delivery, housing, schooling, the 'nature and prospect' of existing civil societal norms perceived to be under threat.

The flipside sees landlords benefiting from rentals of sometimes overcrowded housing; contractors finding cheaper and often more skilled labour; households and small hotels finding maids and other service providers at rates of pay previously unknown; proprietors of clubs and bars hiring go-go dancers often 'moonlighting' as prostitutes. This list may be expanded but the picture is clear.

For the economy as a whole, aggregate effective money demand rises as commercial activity booms. Meanwhile, back home, remittances provide upkeep for unlawfully employed migrants' loved ones and significant others. Social and economic problems abound.

How to address them? Capital moves relatively free within CARICOM. Myrie's case should force us to confront and manage labour movement in ways that address frustrated Caribbean development.

Doing so effectively requires transparency, effective collection of data on relevant issues, credible demographic projections and a shared commitment to place welfare of our populations at the centre of development.

Gaps in Caricom's available statistics in too many areas don't augur well for such an endeavour. We must fix all this.

Wilberne Persaud, an economist, currently works on impacts of technology change on business and society, including capital solutions for innovative Caribbean SMEs.wilbe65@yahoo.com