dav086

Hi All,
I am new here, so sorry if this has already been posted (I did look around the forums, but haven't found what I'm looking for ).

I am looking to relocate to a Caribbean Island. Nothing fancy - just white beaches, deep blue sea and good surf!
Most of the places I have read about here, and on the rest of the internet, seem to be for the rich, or the retired - with boats and big houses. And people without a financial background or unlimited reserves seem to be finding it difficult to make a life there.

As long as the locals are friendly, they drink rum and I can get casual job in a bar (or similar) - then I'll be happy. I live in a tourist area in Wales right now, so it's quite nice to play with the tourists for a few months then go back to the quiet of the area for the rest of the year. To find its Caribbean counterpart is my dream.

Does such a place exist? Thanks!

Pistolpete2

The quick answer is NO! In the same way that someone from the Caribbean looking to live this lifestyle in the Uk would not even be allowed to board the plane to get to the UK. All islands require work permits which are issued in exchange for skills which are not readily available in the islands which in turn suffer from high unemployment as it is.

dav086

righto - thanks. I might just head over with enough savings to live for a while and see what I can come up with.
As for sought after skills... is there much work for a graphic/web designer and IT consultant over in the Caribbean?

Pistolpete2

There might be but as I kind of indicated before, employers are typically looking to Caricom members first before looking elsewhere and there should be that talent in that employee base. They do not require a work permit (they just need a skills certificate) which costs Ec$7,500 per annum and it can be hard to come by. St Lucia, for example, has a community college that produces "graduates" with associate degrees in technical areas such as IT and graphic design so that St Lucia is not dependent upon "imports" to get the work done.

However any island in the Windwards (Dominica, St Lucia, St Vincent & The Grenadines, Grenada) could be an ideal base for you to pursue other activities and you could build contacts back in the UK to do your design and consulting work on-line*. There are plenty of Uk-origin people here making a living like that and you get the best of both worlds.

Bear in mind though that if you do not have a work permit you have to pay as you go once your vacation period has ended and cough up extension fees which could be a drain until you get formal residence papers which can take several years depending upon which Island you choose.

I need more feedback here from others to work out how practical they see consulting back into the UK is in light of residence permits in the Caribbean in general and how this balances against lifestyle. St Lucia, Grenada and Dominica could be possible.

*I think you would need to portray that you have a UK business doing this in order to satisfy the local immigration requirements here but note that many work permit holders are very cagey about details of their actual job functions and how they came by their work permits and/or residence status but I would rather not go into that

Pistolpete2

Check these rules for Barbados:

You still need to show evidence that you can support yourself but it's a start.

http://businessbarbados.com/investor...-work-permits/

pgtips

lol, straight to the point !!!

Pistolpete2

Hi Pg

I was just able to ferret out some good immigration and residency info on Barbados and fired it off, above.

After your comments on the price of residency in St V I looked to see what everybody else charges. Cayman is stratospheric but Barbados seems fairly reasonable. But of course EVERYBODY not connected by marriage needs to show either that they have private means or good skills to earn them.

pgtips

The dream and reality are two different things !!! Everybody has this dream, but recently the Caribbean has more graduates than ever and as somebody has already pointed out they are not short if talent in this area.
What they need is people with money who can come and create employment, not the other way around. To some extent the Caribbean is still the playground of the rich. If you have money you can live a great lifestyle. If on the otherhand you have little or no money things can be very tough and even them beautiful sandy beaches will start getting on your nerves.
You gotta have some money to taste the Caribbean honey !!!
The property I own in the Caribbean was bought with money I earned in England, as is the case with a lot of people.
So maybe make your money first and then come and play !!!

pgtips

I am going to have a read through it. I know at one stage Dominica was charging about $50,000 us for an economic citiizenship, but this was scrapped. I Know a couple of people who have been coming and working in the UK for a few months in IT as things are quite slow in St Lucia. They are not to bad off as they already own their properties. Looking for work in St Lucia now is not the easiest of things to do.

Pistolpete2

If you are not from Caricom I would think there is little on offer and even if you are. Real estate is SHOT! However regular visitor tourism is doing well here in spite of the APD, Tomas and Volcanoes erupting, largely thanks to a big increase in visitors from the USA due to two flights a day out of Miami and JetBlue. Plus BA goes daily next month. Estimates for 2011 are not so rosey however, particularly for the UK market.

St Lucia media had spoken of economic citizenship here but I heard nothing further. I don't think that St Lucia needs it as an arm twister: there SHOULD be enough other positive attributes to sell it.

pgtips

Pistolpete2, I think as you mentioned earlier is the way forward is to work remotely from St Lucia but have clients in other locations. Build up a client base and then have a system in place where most of the work can be done remotely and meetings held on line, skype etc. Maybe travel back once or twice a year to make new contacts and cement existing contacts.

I have come to the realisation that many bank clerks in St Lucia hold degrees, that just shows you how competitive it is. Some other Jobs they want a good degree and at least 10 years experience !!! Hotel jobs and shop jobs are so poorly paid that someone from the UK will struggle to survive.


There is also a heavty culture of who you are associated with and those with the right influential contacts jump a few rungs up the ladder.

When times get really tough, how many UK people can survive on ground provisions and home made juice for long ? Caribbean people know how to cope through difficilt situations but in Europe we have been spoilt, so adapting to working for very little money locally would be torture for most, which defeats the object of moving to paradise.

Pistolpete2

I agree with all of what you say here pg but the lack of jobs situation for these educationally qualified individuals is for the most part created by a lack of a better service leg to the economy. Most of the countries in this region have leftist worker oriented governments and have set up protectionist measures in the form of rigid and often expensive work permit requirements which have in part acted as a disincentive to inwards investment. As a result, Caricom has created a sort of labour merry-go-round where the community can only feed on itself unless it gains preferential access to markets along the lines of the now almost defunct banana agreement.

I think the great fear is that European and American colonialist attitudes will once more cause investors to flock in and abuse the local workforce with little local financial gain. Already tourism is being accused by some of being one such abusive employer. Therefore, the key is that local governments put the feet to the fire of investors and lay down sensible "ground" rules early so that there can be a genuine win win situation. A real poker game but one ALL countries now have to play.

Things are not as easy as they were a couple of years back. The removal of depositor/client secrecy in offshore banking in the wake of the global financial crisis when western countries' public finances got taken to the cleaners by banking bailouts has meant that entry to this sector in any meaningful way is going to be a hard road. However, there are real opportunities for entities like ECFH (Bank of St Lucia) to act as back offices to the major financial centres BUT we are not focusing on developing a proper skills base either nationally or regionally as Sir Dwight Venner, Governor of the Eastern Caribbean Central bank advocates. This would "soak" up all of those graduates you talk of.

A further leg could be created through further development of St Lucia as an educational centre in specialty areas such as agriculture, twinned with colleges such as Wye (University of London). Finally, one could look at development of the food service / food processing industry as Barbados has done but the investment monies and grants for this need to be carefully sought out.

With further legs to the economy in the service area, an opening up of the work permit rules to allow skilled entrepreneurs/technicians in to enhance the skills base of the locals and THEN LEAVE or promote further opportunities for locals in other new areas things should start to move things ahead but this requires vision and negotiating skills.

When in Bermuda we used to discuss the fact that for every work permit issued, there were on average seven jobs created for locals. Of course some of these work permits were for CEO-type entrepreneurs but opening up things rather than creating protectionism which in turn spawns a sort of Caribbean ghetto of struggling people of African descent would seem to be a much better option. In spite of what Allen Chastenet says, Bermuda actually kind of gave up on tourism back in the seventies as it quite correctly recognised that with its labour costs and general cost of living it was not going to be able to compete in an arena where tourism was a global commodity and priced accordingly. Not unless it became a sort of western Monte Carlo which is actually what I thought it should become at the time. SO, the smart guys got together and repositioned the island as FIRST and FOREMOST an international business centre for Reinsurance & Brokerage, Trusts, Shipping Management and Mutual Funds. This required accountants and legal specialists and truckloads of secretarial and admin staff and the local workforce adapted to this. With these changes a big chunk of tourism was actually business-related but tourism per se steadily declined as other new destinations like Orlando, Maui, Mauritius, Maldives, Pattaya, Bali, Antigua, Anguilla & St Barts took market share from Bermuda's traditional customer base. Bermuda then had full employment from international business and more jobs than there were locals to fill them so work permits were issued for all and sundry and the standard of living of the average Bermudian drastically improved.

Something along the lines of the Bermuda model with careful study of the mistakes that were definitely made, would move things forward as otherwise decline will be steady, as it has been for the last ten years or so for most St Lucians in spite of the prosperity that one witnesses in and around Gros Islet.
This would clearly require a completely different mindset in the way St Lucia deals with outsiders.

By the way, nobody is interested in my talents and experience here in St Lucia as I am 1. too old and 2. not St Lucian. There must be untold quantities of wasted talent sitting here if somebody would just open their eyes.

pgtips

Pistolpete2, you have so much vision and it is this kind of vision which St Lucia is desperately in need of now. It is a shame you could not become a consultant for which ever government is in power. Such a shame !!!
You are so right about wasted talent being already on the island.

Pistolpete2

Thanks for reading Pg!

I actually don't think that the governments are that interested, believe it or not. They have other fish to fry!

You will find political parties are interested in what you have to say so that they can put something well thought out and legitimate in their manifesto in the run-up to a General Election (as now) but once in power they don't really care.

Islandalan

Margarita Island is certainly the cheapest Caribbean Island with the best climate in the world and no hurricanes. Work however is difficult to find as are any business opportunities at the moment. I made my money in the U.K. first too ,although not much is needed to live here.