YOU know that feeling when you want to shout and make the loudest noise about something but when you get the chance to do just that, the onslaught of words becomes overwhelming and you choke?
Well, yep, that’s me right now so bear with me as I carefully tread whilst explaining my immense opposition over the notion of Citizenship by Investment in St. Lucia.
This idea is once again forcing our tiny island to put on her see through pumps, little red dress and lipstick and perch on the roadside in a bid to prostitute herself…AGAIN!
I’m sorry but I’m not sorry for being adamant (in my own head) that this idea is bad and wrong on so many levels…no amount of coaxing will change my mind so don’t even bother trying with me.
I am a St. Lucian. I was born that way and I will proudly die that way…even with the opportunity presented to me, I will never change that status in the form of naturalisation in another country or whatever other ways in existence to change my nationality on paper.
I find it insulting that someone can come to my country, wave some cash around and BOOM, they obtain my nationality, my identity, my “St. Lucianness”…nothing about that sits right with me. When I think about it, this is the one time that I am proud to be selfish and say that I’m not willing to share.
I am all for the well-being and progression of this country and if fat cats are willing to invest in St. Lucia, open establishments here, provide jobs and propel our economy forward, then fine…but they can do that on some sort of investors visa or something where their time here is limited, viable for revocation and kept under a microscope to ensure that complacency is not followed up by funny business, if you know what I’m saying.
But what message do you think we are sending out when we open the gates for these characters to come in and nest here for the right price?
It is said that the vetting system will be thorough and intense…hmmm, so tell me, will that vetting system come with a magic scanner to reveal people’s true hearts? Forgive me if I sound like the tool Donald Trump, but whilst I will never assume or insinuate that every investor will be undercover monsters, how will anyone in truth and fact be able to tell the difference?
Yeah their finances etc might be in tact but who knows what skeletons and crimes their billions have paid to expunge and bury? HOW WILL YOU KNOW? And also, what’s to stop them from either starting up or continuing with their dirty habits once they have that new citizenship to their names? What about the slave driver type who is simply eyeing St. Lucia as their new cash cow and don’t actually give a damn about St. Lucians, just as long as their money is coming in, to hell with the workers?
My list of questions is seriously long so I’ll give it a rest for now.
Now before you come with “America and the UK did it successfully” Just hold your brakes and let me tell you something that I say all the time…I DON’T CARE…I’m talking about MY country, St. Lucia, NOT these other countries…THEY can do what they want, I’m thinking about the well-being of MY country ONLY!
I know that I said that I’d cool it with the questions but one that keeps popping up in my head is: “Why would anyone want to buy another citizenship? Are you trying to run away from your own?” I just can’t shake that ill feeling of the kinds of characters we will be inviting over here.
Another ill feeling that I can’t shake is my fear that St. Lucians will become extinct and that this rock will be just another nationality soup where every Tom, Dick and Harry with his money, wife (wives), children, brothers and sisters, parents, cousins, “nenens” and their children plus their dog and pet fish can come here, settle, set up shop and turn this island into the next little Britain, China, Germany or wherever…you get what I’m saying though. You don’t? Take a walk down Chisel Street in Castries and take a look at who owns most if not all the stores on that entire stretch…that’s just the beginning of things to come.
If you ask me to look at the silver lining in all of this, I’d say maybe, just maybe now so many St. Lucians won’t have the need to flock to the States or Canada to live like livestock in apartment basements just so that they could make a few US dollars to babysit other people’s children…there will be enough foreign investors who will be willing to look down their noses at them whilst they look after their snotty children or shivering, pampered bag pooches right here at home.
So there, I said it in the cleanest and calmest way that I could. Disagree? (In my “poshest” British accent) I don’t care!
Hurrah!
Puerto Rico once had OPERATION BOOTSTRAP designed by USA to entice mostly mainland/continental USA investors to the island. Huge 10+ years of TAX abatements sweetened the list of enticements.
The investors did not even RECIRCULATE profits in the local economy. Adding insult to injury ALL of their managers and white collar force were IMPORTED.
Locals got only menial labor and shared blue collar positions at the international open market.
Puerto Rico remained the WELFARE “Commonwealth”dependency of the US and is now as Bankrupt as Greece.
You are right about the prostitution angle- except that Russian blondes make $900+ per popping John in Brighton Beach Brooklyn whereas St. Lucia would make only TUPPENCE -hapney on this fantasy deal.
The Colombian and Mexican cartels are grinning from ear to ear-rightfully so.
‘Don’t paint me xenophobic’ but I will write an article labelling foreigners as slave drivers and fat cats, who should pump all their money here, stay for a short time to build something, do exactly what they are told, then leave it all. Sounds like a great deal.
It is a sensitive issue with all sorts of complexities, and the author has dealt with it with a complete lack of tact and nuance, as usual. In the interests of balance, if you find it completely distasteful that someone can come and ‘wave some cash’ for entry, where do you stand on the large numbers of Lucian émigrés, sans papers, who go abroad offering only their middle finger to the local population? I know which one is right and wrong. Do you know that as the Caribbean integrates, the caricom freedom of movement will produce the same results you are against? Or is this invective directed at another particular audience.
Anyway despite the author’s poor tone, as a foreign (not fat cat) friend of St Lucia I have often said that selling passports was not a good idea for you. The island is too small, the institutions and social capital are not well developed and there is a lack of clearly defined goals, aside from plugging the ever widening cash deficit. To be frank, it is also false flattery to think it is a passport worth having. Where does it let you go that their own passport doesn’t let them? It will actually have the effect of cheapening its status for the local people because it will become known that it is up for anyone who wants to pay for it. An unintended consequence will be problems for opening foreign bank accounts, external migration etc.
I am also baffled as to why some people think it will automatically bring investment. St Lucia already has plenty of foreign retirees or people who have purchased homes. These are the ones who quietly help in the development because they spend more time in the communities and have some accumulated income to spend. They extract relatively little compared to the low income entrants a la Lambird.
I would suggest a better way is to further encourage incentives for skilled retirees who want island life. They have no need to compete for jobs and can maybe assist in setting up small businesses, community based projects to share skills, services or do some volunteering. Having people do mentoring would be a great contribution given the youth are crying out for leadership. You have to be reasonable in what you can expect people to contribute.
There’s thousand more issues to discuss, but it is no place to start being emotive. Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel….
Yeah, are you a scorned Ex of Rochelle or something? Because the stalker-ish vibes you are sending off on so many of the woman’s pieces are becoming very apparent. It all makes sense that you are a foreign “friend” to St. Lucia because someone who was born and raised here would see where Rochelle coming from. I don’t always agree with her but for God’s sake, I don’t sit at my pc like a drooling psycho just waiting for one of her pieces to pop up so that I could lambaste her. On this matter, I fully agree with her and I think at one point you were so busy critiquing that you missed the part where she did touch upon St. Lucians going abroad. I know this is a place to provide feedback but if you can’t make it positive feedback, why don’t you do what many mothers and grandmothers tell their young ones to do and STHU if you have nothing good to say.
Rob, this character who calls himself YEAH, is one of these retrograde Negro Samboes who has been granted the status of honorary white in Brooklyn where he sells cheesecake on Flatbush Ave. He used to go with the pseudonym TOM TOM but after being exposed as a lowlife he now goes by the pseudonyms CITIZEN KANE, and YEAH. This Negro has a so-called white woman as his girlfriend giving him the illusion that he has arrived. It is best to ignore this incorrigible disgrace, and allow him to go spitting into the wind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lo2FALSsE54
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In addition to the PSCHO_STALKER label; common folks would also label him MARCO or SOUZ-SEER in creole and my Jamaican patois comrades would play this song to describe his talents
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRDDOubyXg4
OH Yeah, if your obsessional delusions over Lady Rochelle persist to become an ISSUE; here is the kind of retro strategy that is being considered by her fan clan:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKzN6f5tsFca
You the Viet Cong and termites share an affinity for sub-basement residential spaces , n’est pas?
That’s ok Yuh can HIDE but yuh cannot outrun our avenging intruders
f
Here is the Angel that will be deployed to come and get Yeah even in a troical trough like Erica or Tomas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bn8WNF0rVLA
We are the antidote for bullies
Rochelle, get a hold of your self. China town is and has being operating in Saint Lucia for some time now, thanks to Dominica citizenship by investment. You providing a disservice to your reading public. Why you fail to inform all that once you obtain citizenship by investment in one OECS participating country, you can set up shop in any other OECS country even if that country is not participating in the program. In addition, Antigua and St. Kitts set the bench mark at US$400,000 per investor. So should sweet Helen just sit by and accept de China man with a DA passport knowing full well is DA that take his money? or get out of the OECS? or set up a proper committee to conduct due diligence on every US$400,000 citizenship by investment applicant? Your emotions has taken the better of you on such an important issue, that you have failed to present the facts as you know it. SHAME ON YOU….
And if he eludes the avenger angel there is always Buckingham’s special service
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u53CBSedcIQ
We all breathe a collective sigh when the pscho stalker becomes the HUNTED, oui.
Hacking Att & Verizon telemetry triangulation of the psycho stalker bully data signals we can confirm that IT is located in the Patterson New Jersey environs. Our recon crew will confirm within 36 hours. The usual UPS /FED EX cover will suffice.
Have no fear Yeah
we have the Midnight Rambler riding shotgun on this hunt;
Here is his profile:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHZeBKfoNEc
Yeah the Midnight Rambler you do not want on your tail literally or figuratively HE is a real AFRICANIZED WASP (Pun not intended)
and here are the words that accompany the cockney video rendition of the Midnight Rambler note how many times he calls your name (YEAH) out
I did not make this up (I would be earning 100000’s $ in annual royalties)
Yeah ; the Midnight Rambler is major antidote for elusive bullies, n’est pas?
“Did you hear about the midnight rambler
Everybody got to go?
Did you hear about the midnight rambler
The one that shut the kitchen door?
He don’t give a hoot of warning
Wrapped up in a black cat cloak
He don’t go in the light of the morning
He split the time the cockerel crows
Talkin’ ’bout the midnight gambler
The one you never seen before, yeah
Talkin’ ’bout the midnight gambler
Did you see him jump the garden wall?
Sighin’ down the wind so sadly
Listen and you’ll hear him moan, yeah, well
Talkin’ ’bout the midnight gambler
Everybody got to go, dance
Did you hear about the midnight rambler
Well, honey, it’s no rock and roll show
Well, I’m talkin’ about the midnight gambler, yeah
One you never seen before
Don’t you do that
Don’t you do that
Don’t you do that
Well you heard about the Boston
It’s not one of those
Well, talkin’ ’bout the midnight
The one that closed the bedroom door
I’m called the hit-and-run raper in anger
The knife-sharpened tippie-toe
Or just the shoot ’em dead, brainbell jangler
You know, the one you’ve never seen before
So if you ever meet the midnight rambler
Coming down your marble hall
Well, he’s pouncing like proud black panther
Well, you can say I, I told you so
Well, don’t you listen for the midnight rambler?
Oh, you all, play it easy as you go
I’m gonna smash down all your plate glass windows
Put a fist, put a fist through your steel-plated door
Did you hear about the midnight rambler?
He’ll leave his footprints up and down your hall
And did you hear about the midnight gambler?
And did you see me make my midnight call?
And if you ever catch the midnight rambler
I’ll steal your mistress from under your nose
I’ll go easy with your cold fanged anger
I’ll stick my knife right down your throat, baby, and it hurts”
Songwriters
JAGGER, MICK / RICHARDS, KEITH
Published by
Lyrics © Abkco Music, Inc.
The Midnight Rambler shared some bully eradication strategies in this compilation-
just for you Yeah.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6eb7cFMoJU
Sure to shudder your shutters, :)’