Barbados PM admits illegal Guyanese worked at residence
Cites larger cause of free movement
Stabroek News
February 25, 2003
(Barbados Nation) An unrepentant Prime Minister Owen Arthur on Sunday night pleaded “guilty” to allowing illegal Guyanese nationals to work at his private residence in the larger cause of the free movement of labour in Caricom.
The Barbadian prime Minister, who first made the admission last week in Trinidad and Tobago at the end of the 14th inter-sessional Caricom summit, has been criticised by a prospective Opposition opponent in his St Peter constituency who called for Arthur’s resignation or removal from office by the Governor-General.
But Arthur, at a branch meeting at Alexandra School during which he was again nominated to contest the race for the Barbados Labour Party, cast his action against the backdrop of the planned creation of a Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME) providing for the free movement of graduates and skilled labour.
He said Caribbean people had to reconsider the way in which they segregated the movement of skilled people and unskilled people.
“The truth is that even before the Caribbean heads had thought about the CSME, the people of the Caribbean - the carpenters, the masons, all of the people without formal education and skills - have made this region already their common economic space, and they have been moving freely throughout the region although the law says they shouldn’t.”
Arthur observed, however, that what had happened was that one set of migration took place within the law and was respectable and respected, but the larger part was treated as illegal.
“I say as well that long may it continue, but that the time has come for us in the region to destigmatise and to decriminalise what is being done by the ordinary man and the ordinary woman to make the common economic space that we are creating in the law their economic space in terms of reality.
“There are Guyanese who are working here - done good work too, in the construction industry - and I say again that some have done work at my house. “There is hardly a person in Barbados who has not had a service rendered on their behalf by some person who has come to this country who the immigration laws say should not be here.
“But we should welcome them because the CSME should not just be a formal structure, it should be a welcoming environment where every Caribbean citizen feels that he or she has a space.
“For the time being, it makes all of us who access these services accomplices to the breaking of the law. I therefore plead guilty.
“But I plead guilty in the higher service of a higher cause that I do not feel that I should stigmatise a Guy-anese artisan who has a contribution to make to this country.”
He felt Caricom should work towards having a region that treats the flow of graduate migrants and those without university qualifications the same. “If I am to be condemned for making that simple point then I stand condemned.”
