Two weeks from now (Oc­to­ber 1), what is wide­ly de­scribed as the “full free move­ment”, on a rec­i­p­ro­cal ba­sis, of Cari­com na­tion­als from Bar­ba­dos, Be­lize, Do­mini­ca, and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines (SVG) will be in place.

The pro­vi­sion is de­scribed in the com­mu­niqué emerg­ing from the 49th Heads of Gov­ern­ment Con­fer­ence host­ed in Ja­maica last Ju­ly. A re­minder of this was sent to the press on Mon­day.

The sum­mit state­ment de­scribes what is now ex­pect­ed from these coun­tries un­der the rel­a­tive­ly new Cari­com Pro­to­col on En­hanced Co­op­er­a­tion–the ap­pli­ca­tion of which, in­ci­den­tal­ly, and in the words of the com­mu­niqué, re­quires au­tho­ri­sa­tion by the full body.

Un­der this mea­sure, Cari­com heads “can al­low groups of at least three Mem­ber States to seek to ad­vance in­te­gra­tion among them­selves where the Con­fer­ence (of Heads) agrees that the tar­get­ed ob­jec­tives can­not be at­tained with­in a rea­son­able pe­ri­od by the Com­mu­ni­ty as a whole”.

These four coun­tries will thus now, and among them­selves, “grant their na­tion­als the right to en­ter, leave and re-en­ter, move freely, re­side, work and re­main in­def­i­nite­ly in the re­ceiv­ing mem­ber State with­out the need for a work or res­i­den­cy per­mit”.

“Their na­tion­als will al­so be able to ac­cess emer­gency and pri­ma­ry health care, and pub­lic pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary ed­u­ca­tion, with­in the means of the re­ceiv­ing mem­ber State.”

This sug­gests that the re­main­ing eight CSME coun­tries will, for the mo­ment, re­side out­side the em­brace of this mea­sure and con­tin­ue to ben­e­fit sole­ly from the cur­rent, pre­scribed cat­e­gories of “skilled na­tion­al” pro­vi­sions.

It had al­ways been the stat­ed as­pi­ra­tion that all of us would have trav­elled the full route. This is mi­nus The Ba­hamas, Haiti, and Montser­rat–all for dif­fer­ent rea­sons.

Yet, close fol­low­ers al­ways knew that this ac­tive ex­plo­ration of pos­si­bil­i­ties would have pre­sent­ed pe­cu­liar chal­lenges to some coun­tries in which un­fet­tered po­lit­i­cal and wider pub­lic re­solve had nev­er re­al­ly been en­thu­si­as­ti­cal­ly ex­hib­it­ed, es­pe­cial­ly over re­cent years. T&T has been one of these.

Giv­en that pub­lic opin­ion has been rou­tine­ly sub­ject to po­lit­i­cal am­biva­lence on this ques­tion, there ex­ists a sit­u­a­tion in which aware­ness of ben­e­fits and chal­lenges re­mains in chron­ic deficit.

It has not helped that nei­ther the Cari­com Sec­re­tari­at nor our re­spec­tive gov­ern­ments have viewed sta­tis­tics and da­ta as ab­solute­ly nec­es­sary to guide both pub­lic pol­i­cy and opin­ion.

For ex­am­ple, there is a view in T&T (when­ev­er the ques­tion aris­es about the use val­ue of Cari­com) that this coun­try is sub­ject to net fi­nan­cial and hu­man re­source loss­es (and not gains) when it comes to the op­er­a­tion of the Sin­gle Mar­ket, how­ev­er flawed and fre­quent­ly mis­un­der­stood.

Though net es­ti­mates of in­tra-re­gion­al mi­grant flows on ac­count of Sin­gle Mar­ket pro­vi­sions are in­com­pre­hen­sive­ly dif­fi­cult to har­vest (I can­not re­mem­ber the last up­date from the Sec­re­tari­at or from T&T), there is far less vague­ness on the bal­ance of trade sur­plus (TT$8.5 bil­lion in 2022), to­geth­er with the work of 27 in­sti­tu­tions of Cari­com.

The Cari­com Pri­vate Sec­tor Or­gan­i­sa­tion (CP­SO) has pledged re­search and ad­vo­ca­cy re­sources on the is­sues of trade and free move­ment. But it is the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of in­di­vid­ual states to get their act to­geth­er on the ques­tion of time­ly, re­li­able da­ta.

The “Cari­com is a waste of time” ar­gu­ment is a long-es­tab­lished func­tion of un­for­give­able ig­no­rance, and the ba­sis for an ar­gu­ment that there is more to be gained than lost through dis­en­gage­ment and re­cal­i­brat­ed loy­al­ties.

Even so, this is typ­i­cal­ly char­ac­terised by cher­ry-pick­ing re­ten­tion of in­dis­pens­able in­sti­tu­tion­al re­la­tion­ships in the ar­eas of law, busi­ness, ed­u­ca­tion, health, food, and oth­er key ar­eas of de­vel­op­ment. This is im­por­tant as it is now abun­dant­ly clear that no­body else will see about these things on our be­half.

For­mer Cari­com as­sis­tant sec­re­tary-gen­er­al Trade and Eco­nom­ic In­te­gra­tion, Joseph Cox (now lead­ing the Caribbean Busi­ness Re­view), re­cent­ly en­gaged Cari­com Deputy Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Dr Arm­strong Alex­is in an en­light­en­ing con­ver­sa­tion on these and oth­er mat­ters.

The en­counter gen­er­at­ed the in­ter­est to stim­u­late to­day’s mis­sive on this page. But it al­so raised ques­tions re­gard­ing Cari­com’s “evolv­ing man­date” (Alex­is’ for­mu­la­tion) and an un­rav­el­ling of the re­gion­al ta­pes­try from the un­tidy un­der­side.

In the process, po­lit­i­cal in­vest­ment in ex­ca­vat­ing re­al val­ue from lim­it­ed, and in some cas­es di­min­ish­ing, na­tion­al wealth ap­pears in de­cline. Four from among us have cho­sen to dig deep­er. Who’s next? We al­ready, dis­ap­point­ing­ly, know who won’t be.