Citizenship For Sale

We present and encourage progressive Caribbean views of Caribbean and world Affairs

Is the Caribbean on the auction block ?

As the economic crisis lengthens, Caribbean governments strapped for foreign exchange and foreign investments have decided to sell citizenship in order to plug holes within their economies. We have already stated that we are being drawn into a whirlpool of global proportions that may very well, forever, change the image and direction of our island states.

There are those who will argue and quite correctly that bigger and more economically powerful countries, including the United States of America, are already involved in such activity. Once again we are forced to ask: Why are we following others?

Many of our people, who live in the Diaspora, have given up on returning home because of what they consider to be the high cost of living. While we do not support such positions, we are fully aware that those who have planted roots in other countries have many factors to consider when contemplating a return to our island states.

However, what we fear is that those who do want to return will now have to compete with very wealthy investor/ economic citizens, who once they become settled, would want to reap all the rewards of their investment in citizenship.  We must therefore question the wisdom in these short term remedies to problems that cannot be solved overnight.

We can therefore expect several negatives to emerge which will be bordering on economic and social discrimination. The question should be: Did we endure four hundred years of slavery and colonialism to sell our birthright? The question once asked of Barbadians ,by the Errol Barrow, must now be asked of the entire Caribbean: What kind of mirror image do we have of ourselves?

Kindly read  the related article below:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/12/caribbean-islands-sell-citizenship_n_2670241.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/12/caribbean-islands-sell-citizenship_n_2670241.html