Caricom membership could lead to radical expansion of the rights of long term residents

I've been exploring the potential consequences of Caricom membership since the Government released its Green Paper some weeks ago.

I have been putting together a lot of analysis on it, but have held on releasing anything, because I have concluded that the Green Paper ends up not providing enough detail to understand which parts exactly the Government intends to sign up to . The Green Paper says that they have conducted an article-by-article review of the Caricom treaty (Treaty of Chaguaramas), but this has not been published.

For example, they say that full membership will allow Bermudians to explore business opportunities in Caricom, and indicate that they support the Right of Establishment elements of the treaty, subject to some safeguards. The Right of Establishment is the ability of Caricom nationals to establish businesses - including access to land for business purposes - in other member states. This would entail a radical change to Bermuda's immigration restrictions over land ownership.

The Caricom treaty also contemplates the harmonisation of laws across a raft of areas, which could be hugely consequential. The Green Paper brushes this aside as a 'longer term goal', not really focussing on whether Bermuda will sign up to those articles or not. In the context of customs duties, the Green Paper says that the Bermuda government supports 'regional trade integration'. Does this mean that Bermuda will sign up to Caricom's protectionist Common External Tariff, which mandates duty of 20 - 40% on many food items (Bermuda currently has a 5% tariff on most food items)? The Green Paper says Caricom offers new Blue Economy opportunities - does this mean they intend to sign up to those articles which could cede much control of Bermuda's immense and largely unexplored maritime resources to Caricom?

There are too many unknowns here to be able to comment in detail at this stage.

Minister Lightbourne has said that the Government will now work on producing a White Paper, which will include a legal review of the reservations Bermuda intends to put forward for the treaty. Meaningful public feedback can only really happen at that stage, when we know what they actually intend to sign up to.

For now, though, I will keep my comments to a couple of elements that directly concern the rights of long term residents, and also on challenges to immigration controls.

The government is not framing it this way, but full membership of Caricom could be the most radical expansion of rights for long term residents that Bermuda has seen in a generation. Below, I shall address how Caricom could impact on the rights of long term residents. This post is already up to almost 900 words, so I shall save my comments on challenges to Immigration controls to another article to be published in the next day or so.