标签： Dominica

In mid-May 2026, three CARICOM citizens from Jamaica and Belize arrived in Basseterre, the capital of St. Kitts and Nevis, transferred there under a bilateral deportation arrangement with the United States. None of the three had criminal convictions; their only offense was overstaying their U.S. visas. They are not threats or criminals, just people caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, unwanted by the United States and passed along to small Caribbean nations.

This quiet transfer has pushed a long-simmering regional tension into the open, as Antigua and Barbuda becomes the next Caribbean state facing U.S. pressure to accept deported third-country nationals. In response, the Antigua and Barbuda government has released a public White Paper outlining strict conditions under which it would consider accepting a tightly capped number of these transfers. The debate unfolding across the Caribbean exposes deep structural inequities in global migration governance and raises a pressing question: how has the region been pushed to absorb other countries’ unaddressed problems again and again?

To understand this moment, we can turn to an observation Antonio Gramsci made while imprisoned by Mussolini in the 1930s: “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born, in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” The post-Cold War global order that once set rules for international interaction is visibly fraying, and no new power or framework has emerged to replace it with broad, shared legitimacy. What we live in now is a fragmented, increasingly unregulated multipolar system that resembles less a balanced global order and more an unregulated brawl without a referee. For small Caribbean states, the “morbid symptoms” Gramsci wrote of are already here – and they take four distinct forms in the current deportation debate.

The first is the U.S. deportation policy itself, which frames the outsourcing of deportations to third-party nations as a cooperative partnership. Small Caribbean states are being asked to take in people who hold no citizenship in their countries, often have no existing family or cultural ties to the region, and face no clear path to a stable, durable future. Administrative jargon calls this “third-country removal”; in plain language, it is simply the U.S. shifting its migration policy burdens onto smaller, less powerful nations.

The second harmful symptom is the dehumanizing language used to sell this policy to the public. During an April 2025 cabinet meeting, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed the U.S. was seeking nations willing to accept what he called “the most despicable human beings”, adding that “the further away from America, the better.” This framing directly contradicts the reality of the three men who arrived in Basseterre, none of whom had any criminal convictions beyond immigration violations. Rubio’s harsh rhetoric was crafted for a domestic U.S. political audience conditioned to view certain groups of migrants as inherent threats. It deliberately frames human beings as disposable before Caribbean nations have even had the chance to review individual cases. Deported people are not abstract policy problems: they are parents, siblings, neighbors, people who made mistakes, people who sought better lives for themselves and their families. Upholding the rule of law does not require dehumanization; true security relies on verified information and sovereign, individual assessment, not dehumanizing labels. This dehumanization, dressed up as a concern for national security, is a danger the Caribbean must reject.

The third danger is the stark diplomatic asymmetry that defines the current negotiation. As of July 2026, Antigua and Barbuda is being asked to help the U.S. resolve a politically sensitive migration challenge, even as Antigua and Barbuda’s own citizens face sweeping restrictions on new U.S. visa applications. Caribbean nations are considered good enough to receive the U.S.’s unwanted deportees, but Caribbean travelers are forced to pay heavy bonds and face arbitrary restrictions just to enter the U.S. This imbalance is not a minor side issue; it strikes directly at the core of reciprocity, national dignity, and national interest. This does not mean human beings should be treated as bargaining chips – but if Antigua and Barbuda is being asked to take on legal, financial, social, and political risk for the benefit of the U.S., it is fully entitled to demand clear, concrete, measurable benefits for its own citizens in return.

To the Antigua and Barbuda government’s credit, its recently released White Paper acknowledges most of these risks and inequities. It rejects a standing, open-ended monthly transfer program, preserves full sovereign discretion over which cases to accept, and proposes a strict cap of no more than ten transfers in 2026, with a full policy review scheduled for 2027 before any further decisions are made. The White Paper also sets strict exclusion criteria, and requires written, binding commitments for legal status, full funding for all related costs, healthcare, social support, and return arrangements for any individual transferred, before any transfer proceeds. Most critically, the document explicitly calls for lifting blanket visa restrictions on Antigua and Barbuda’s citizens as a core condition of any agreement. This position must be defended and strengthened: the visa issue cannot be separated from the deportation negotiation, and Antigua and Barbuda should never accept open-ended risk in exchange for vague promises of future favor. Parliamentary scrutiny must be required before any transfers move forward.

Small Caribbean states are not powerless. The U.S. itself refers to the region as its “third border”, a phrase that implicitly acknowledges the region’s strategic importance to U.S. interests. That status gives Caribbean nations standing to negotiate, not just to accept terms dictated from Washington. Sovereignty is not a gift granted by great powers; it is a muscle that atrophies if it is not exercised. That is why this diplomatic imbalance must be addressed head-on.

The fourth and final danger is the tendency to reduce this critical national issue to petty partisan division. This is not a question of whether one supports or opposes the sitting government; the government has a duty to be fully transparent with the public, the opposition has a duty to provide rigorous scrutiny, and citizens have a right to demand seriousness from both sides of the political aisle. Across the political divide, five core non-negotiable principles should unite all Antiguans and Barbudans: no open-ended standing program or automatic admissions; no transfers without complete biographical, biometric, medical, criminal, and asylum information; no acceptance of individuals with serious criminal convictions, unresolved asylum claims, or cases based solely on expedited removal; no transfers before written agreements for full cost coverage, legal status, and return responsibility are secured; and no agreement without parliamentary scrutiny and the inclusion of U.S. visa restrictions in negotiations.

This position is not anti-American; it is pro-Antigua and Barbuda. Friendship between sovereign nations does not require obedience. Mature diplomacy allows a small state to say: we value our relationship with the U.S., we recognize the existing power imbalance, we will listen respectfully, but we will not become a dumping ground for another country’s unresolved migration problems, and we will not accept one-sided risk while our own citizens face unfair and demeaning restrictions.

Partisan division on this issue plays only into the hands of outside interests. The real danger is not just what the U.S. asks of the Caribbean – it is how we turn on each other when we debate it. These “monsters” of inequity and dehumanization thrive when compassion is mocked as weakness, caution is dismissed as disloyalty, scrutiny is branded sabotage, and foreign political talking points become common sense in local politics.

We do not need to adopt Marco Rubio’s dehumanizing language to uphold our national interests, nor do we need to build our diplomatic posture on anger alone. We can be clear-eyed, firm, and united around core principles: lawful process, strict limits on transfers, full funding, full vetting, parliamentary oversight, reciprocal visa treatment, and the sovereign right to say no.

The monsters in this debate are not the migrants. They are the four dangerous frameworks that have brought us to this point: outsourced deportation disguised as partnership, dehumanization disguised as security, diplomatic imbalance disguised as friendship, and partisan division disguised as patriotism. We can defeat these four threats by remembering who we are: we are a small state, but not a small people. We are friends of the United States, but not subordinates. We are prepared to cooperate, but only on terms that protect our citizens, our laws, our national capacity, and our dignity.

The real test facing Antigua and Barbuda today is not whether it accepts ten deportees. It is whether it accepts a framework that will allow ten to become twenty, twenty to become an open-ended flow, while Antigua and Barbuda’s own citizens continue to wait years for visas and post bonds just to visit family abroad. That threshold is where sovereignty begins.

A major political controversy has erupted in Dominica this week after the opposition Dominica Freedom Party (DFP) launched a scathing attack on the ruling administration’s management of the country’s high-stakes Citizenship by Investment (CBI) programme, following fresh reports that the European Union has formally demanded regional governments wind down these citizenship schemes.

The DFP’s official statement, dated July 13, 2026, confirms the party first learned of the EU’s formal request through public comments made by Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne. Browne has already confirmed that the EU raised its formal concerns about CBI programmes with all member states of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) starting in June 2026.

Just last week, leaders of Eastern Caribbean nations that currently run active CBI programmes gathered in Dominica for an emergency summit. At the close of the meeting, the leaders agreed to adopt a coordinated regional strategy to strengthen the programme’s regulatory frameworks and defend the scheme, which they collectively characterize as a critical lifeline for their small, vulnerable national economies.

Per the DFP’s breakdown, the EU has officially ordered all participating countries to phase out their CBI programmes, with Antigua and Barbuda explicitly given a deadline of June 1, 2028, to end the scheme. Browne has also confirmed that identical formal communications have been dispatched to all other OECS countries running CBI programmes, including Dominica. Unlike the Dominican administration, Browne has already publicly pushed back against the EU’s demand, arguing that CBI revenue is an irreplaceable core income stream for small island developing states that have very few alternative economic development options.

The core of the DFP’s criticism centers on the Dominican government’s decision to remain silent on the issue rather than address the public about the potential risks. The opposition party warns that any country that fails to comply with the EU’s phase-out mandate by 2028 could lose its visa-free travel access to all EU member states—a change that would immediately destroy the value and viability of regional CBI programmes, as investment demand relies entirely on the visa-free benefit.

The DFP notes that this looming outcome is far from unexpected. As far back as the 2019 Dominican general election campaign, the party warned that Dominica was at risk of losing its CBI programme due to lax due diligence procedures, unaddressed ethical concerns, and potential security risks that the scheme posed to European nations. Today, the party also says it has long flagged the extreme danger of Dominica’s overreliance on CBI revenue to fund basic government operations.

To back this claim, the DFP cites figures from the government’s 2025/2026 national fiscal budget, which projects that 56.7% of all the country’s recurrent government revenue will come directly from the CBI programme. Non-CBI recurrent revenue is budgeted at just 456.2 million Eastern Caribbean dollars, while total projected recurrent expenditure stands at 679.9 million Eastern Caribbean dollars—creating a massive gap that is currently filled by CBI proceeds.

If the CBI programme is forced to end by 2028, the DFP argues the Dominican government will be forced to make agonizing fiscal adjustments: deep cuts to recurrent public spending, a sharp increase in public borrowing, tax hikes across the board, or some combination of all three. These changes, the party says, would directly impact core public services that rely on government funding, including salaries for public sector workers, the National Employment Programme, the Yes We Care social safety net programme, public healthcare services, road maintenance, and other routine government operations. In a worst-case scenario, the country could face delayed salary payments for public workers, struggles to meet sovereign debt obligations, declining road infrastructure, and widespread shortages of critical medical supplies.

The loss of CBI funding would also derail progress on major long-term capital projects, including the planned new international airport, the party adds. The combination of steep spending cuts and large tax increases would place unprecedented additional strain on Dominica’s already fragile small economy.

Framing the entire crisis as a direct consequence of poor governance by the current administration, the DFP said in its statement: “The way out of our current and impending worsening malaise is certainly not by entrusting the same government to take the country out of the mess in which it has placed the nation.” The party went further, accusing the ruling Dominica Labour Party (DLP) administration of systemic incompetence and widespread corruption, claiming that misappropriation of public funds is the administration’s most consistent trait.

Looking ahead, the DFP says it has already begun stepped-up organizational preparations to navigate what it expects to be a prolonged period of severe economic challenge. The opposition plans to release a detailed set of alternative policy proposals to the public in the coming months, arguing that Dominica must adopt integrity, transparency, and good governance as the core foundations for long-term national development.

In closing, the DFP acknowledged that the short-term economic damage of losing the CBI programme “may not be avoidable,” but argued that the crisis could ultimately serve as an opportunity to put the country on a more sustainable economic trajectory under new national leadership.