Bar­ba­dos, Do­mini­ca, Be­lize, and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines have thrown open their bor­ders for free move­ment of each oth­er’s cit­i­zens. But while the de­ci­sion has been hailed as a land­mark for re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion, ex­perts sug­gest T&T is hold­ing back be­cause of its frag­ile econ­o­my and mi­gra­tion pres­sures.

On Mon­day, Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) Chair­man and Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley an­nounced the launch of the bloc’s En­hanced Co­op­er­a­tion in Free Move­ment, a step be­yond the ex­ist­ing Cari­com Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my (CSME). Na­tion­als of the four coun­tries can now live, work, and re­tire in­def­i­nite­ly across those ter­ri­to­ries.

But econ­o­mist Dr In­dera Sage­wan be­lieves the move re­flects Mot­t­ley’s com­mit­ment to the CSME and could serve as a mod­el for oth­er states. But she ar­gued that T&T is not yet ready to join, point­ing to weak job cre­ation, slow growth, and for­eign ex­change short­ages.

“There are quite sig­nif­i­cant eco­nom­ic prob­lems that are be­ing con­front­ed by coun­tries in the re­gion, and in the case of Trinidad and To­ba­go, a very strong fo­cus needs to be placed on the is­sue of growth and re­vi­tal­is­ing the ca­pac­i­ty of the coun­try to gen­er­ate em­ploy­ment. If we can get back to a place where there is strong growth, I per­son­al­ly do en­cour­age the free move­ment we are see­ing be­ing em­braced by these four coun­tries,” Sage­wan said.

She said tim­ing was crit­i­cal, as T&T was al­ready strained by mi­gra­tion.

“When you add on the fact that we have al­lowed so many thou­sands, prob­a­bly run­ning over 100,000, il­le­gal im­mi­grants to come in from Venezuela, which al­ready is a strain on our so­cial ser­vices, I do not think that we can, in this mo­ment, sim­ply widen the net.”

She dis­missed fears of the coun­try be­ing “left be­hind,” say­ing the move was bet­ter suit­ed to small­er economies with high­er un­em­ploy­ment.

Sage­wan added that full CSME adop­tion re­mained the ide­al, but on­ly once T&T’s econ­o­my im­proved.

“If it were in a boom pe­ri­od, I would def­i­nite­ly say ‘by all means, we are more than ready for it.’ But in this mo­ment, giv­en the so­cio-eco­nom­ic chal­lenge, and the num­bers we have al­ready ab­sorbed from Venezuela, I have to say that in this mo­ment, we should prob­a­bly hold our hands un­til we get to a bet­ter place where, ab­solute­ly, I think free move­ment of peo­ple is ide­al­ly what we would want to move to.”

Po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad said the ini­tia­tive was le­git­i­mate un­der the Re­vised Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas and should be seen in the spir­it of re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion. But she cau­tioned that un­fet­tered move­ment car­ried risks for T&T.

“Un­fet­tered free move­ment of per­sons pos­es its chal­lenges for de­vel­op­ing coun­tries. It is much eas­i­er to do this in Eu­rope, and they have done this with Eu­ro­pean in­te­gra­tion, but have not even moved to­wards the com­mon cur­ren­cy. They have the Eu­ro; even the OECS has a com­mon cur­ren­cy, the East­ern Caribbean dol­lar, be­cause of the vary­ing lev­els of de­vel­op­ment and be­cause of de­vel­op­men­tal is­sues.”

Ram­per­sad said Gov­ern­ment would have to care­ful­ly re­view its po­si­tion, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en the mi­grant pres­sures al­ready fac­ing the coun­try.