April 25th 2018

Commonwealth summit highlights tension with UK


The Commonwealth Heads of Governments Meeting (CHOGM) held in London between April 16th and 20th was intended to strengthen links within the Commonwealth, a group of nations made up largely of former British territorial possessions. However, it served instead to underscore growing tension between the UK and Caribbean countries over migration.


With the 12 Caribbean Commonwealth countries uniting to call for UK policy change, relations between the UK and the Caribbean appear set for a period of coolness. The dispute centres on the emergence of the so‑called Windrush scandal in the UK, relating to the residency rights of Caribbean nationals who moved to the UK as children in the late 1940s to early 1970s. Many of those migrants, the children of Commonwealth citizens invited to the UK to work, assumed that they had British nationality or residency rights, with some bringing other family members over from the Caribbean and continuing to send remittances back to their countries of origin.

However, tighter UK immigration policy has exposed a situation in which many migrants are now required to prove their arrival, long‑term residency and employment history in order to confirm their right to remain. This has proved difficult for many of the Windrush generation and led to cases where some have lost their jobs or access to health and social services because their residency status has altered.

The timing of the CHOGM was therefore bad for the UK but fortunate for the Caribbean countries, which were able to hold meetings with the UK government as a unified group. These meetings stressed the importance of relations between the UK and the Commonwealth, and the long history of migration from the Caribbean to the UK.

As a result, the UK prime minister, Theresa May, formally apologised for the distress caused by the recent policy and pledged that citizenship fees will be waived for Windrush migrants, allowing them to regularise their immigration status. Nonetheless, the Windrush scandal has put pressure on UK‑Caribbean relations, which have generally been warm, especially following UK aid and assistance to Caribbean countries affected by Hurricane Irma in September 2017.

Impact on the forecast

Despite the UK's policy reversal, concerns about immigration status may weigh on future Caribbean migration to the UK, especially when combined with the UK's as yet unclear immigration system following Brexit. Nevertheless, we expect the UK to remain an import investment and trade partner for Caribbean economies.


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