Roosevelt Skerrit and his administration state “The government of Dominica has taken its first concrete step towards addressing the country’s population decline and labor shortage, approving the removal of the visa requirements for citizens of the Dominican Republic.”
Roosevelt Skerrit and his administration claim that Dominica is facing a “labour shortage” and use that claim to justify removing visa requirements and importing cheap, unskilled foreign workers. But this claim collapses the moment you look at the numbers.
Dominica’s unemployment rate sits at around 15%. That is not a labour shortage – it’s a job shortage. Roosevelt Skerrit and his administration cannot honestly claim that a country where roughly one in six working-age people cannot find work “lacks workers.”
What Dominica lacks are employment opportunities, sufficient wages, and functioning markets.
Now compare that with the Dominican Republic, the very country Roosevelt Skerrit and his administration point to as a source of labour. The Dominican Republic’s unemployment rate was just 4.9% in 2025, only a third of Dominica’s rate and one of the lowest in the Caribbean and Latin America. Its market is at balance: the workload matches the number of available workers, with slightly more workers than jobs. The Dominican Republic is not exporting workers because it cannot employ them; it’s exporting workers because Roosevelt Skerrit and his administration is willing to accept cheap, unskilled labour in an attempt to artificially boost.
Dominica’s population, and ultimately, manipulate an election.
When Roosevelt Skerrit and his administration speak of a “labour shortage,” they aren’t describing an economic reality or truth. They are reframing unemployment as an inconvenience for employers. What they really mean is this: wages are too low, conditions are too poor, and markets are too distorted for Dominicans to survive on the very few jobs available. Rather than fixing the structural failures they have created over 25 years, they instead now import more vulnerability into the chaos.
A true labour shortage looks like this: low unemployment, rising wages, competition for workers, and productivity growth. Dominica has none of these indicators. What it has instead is high unemployment, stagnant wages, outward migration, and unemployment going through the roof. Bringing in cheap, unskilled foreign workers under these conditions doesn’t solve a “shortage;” it makes the problems worse.
Roosevelt Skerrit and his administration lie because admitting the truth would mean acknowledging 25 years of policy failure. It would mean admitting that agriculture is failing,, not because farmers lack workers, but because they cannot sell their produce at fair prices, cannot access stable markets, and cannot afford labour under current conditions. It would mean acknowledging that young Dominicans are leaving – not because they are lazy, but because Roosevelt Skerrit and his administration offer them no future.
By Roosevelt Skerrit and his administration calling it a “labour shortage,” they attempt to shift blame away from their mismanagement and place it on the population. It also conveniently serves business interests that profit from cheaper, more desperate labour, while ordinary Dominicans are forced to compete downward just to survive.
Roosevelt Skerrit and his administration state “We now have a special policy with the Ministry of Agriculture and Labour and Immigration to bring in Haitians under a program where they will work on farms with local farmers, and a number of farmers have benefited from this and will continue to do so.”
Who exactly are these farmers that Roosevelt Skerrit and his administration are talking about? Because every farmer I know is struggling – not to grow crops, but to secure reliable markets at fair, sustainable prices, so they can able to pay livable wages to anyone they would like to hire.
Exporters are exploiting our farmers desperation, low-balling them for their produce. I have never heard a single farmer complain about a labour shortage. What they do complain about is low profits, poor market conditions, and marginal earnings, which make hiring anyone – skilled or unskilled impossible.
Yet Roosevelt Skerrit and his administration stand in front of the public, pretending he talks to farmers. He has to lie to justify a policy that brings cheap, unskilled foreign workers to Dominica – workers who will not solve the labour problem and, in fact, will make things worse.
Consider the numbers: unemployment in Haiti is around 17%, while in Dominica it’s at 15%. Are we really better off importing cheap, unskilled foreign workers from a country with similar unemployment levels? The answer is clearly NO! Would you move to Haiti for employment opportunities? NO!
Haiti has a population of roughly 11.7 million people, with an unemployment rate of 17%. That’s almost 2,000,000 Haitians – more than 30 times the entire population of Dominica – running to our island visa-free. Even a fraction of that would overwhelm our small economy and kill our workforce here, leaving Dominicans with fewer jobs and opportunities. The sheer scale makes it obvious that this is completely unmanageable for our communities and infrastructure.
Yet somehow, according to Roosevelt Skerrit and his administration, reversing the roles is supposed to benefit us. They refuse to explain how this would work – not because they cannot, but because doing so would expose their true intent. They are trying to artificially stack Dominica’s population with dependents in an attempt to secure electoral advantage, rather than fix the structural failures of the economy.
Dominica is one major hurricane away from economic devastation, and bringing in cheap, unskilled foreign workers under these conditions only undermines employment opportunities for Dominican families. Here is a real-world explanation of what will happen.
- Let us say, for argument’s sake, that a typical Dominican household is a two-parent income that supports children and household expenses.
- Let’s say this family needs to earn $1,500 per month, requiring each parent to make $750 a month.
Now let’s talk about cheap, unskilled foreign workers. Since we are talking about Haiti and the Dominican Republic, we’ll use them as examples.
- They come to our country with nothing – no money, no employment prospects, no skills, and not much education.
- They cannot afford to live on their own, so let’s say five of them rent a place together, and their monthly cost is also $1,500.
- This means that instead of each individual having to earn $750 a month to cover household expenses, each worker only needs to make $300 a month, and pooling the five incomes totals $1,500, which covers their living costs.
So with that in mind, any employer who is looking to hire while trying to maximize profit will naturally favor the cheaper labour. The Dominican worker is now priced out, earning fewer opportunities and fewer benefits – a classic devaluation of local jobs.
This is not a theory. It’s happening in real time in other countries. In Canada, for example, East Indian labour policies, contracted and agreed upon by their government, have brought about half a million cheaper, unskilled foreign workers into the Canadian workforce each year. This influx is driving many skilled locals to leave the country in record numbers in search of better opportunities.
Roosevelt Skerrit and his administrations are effectively replicating this model in Dominica: encouraging the exit of young, skilled and willing Dominicans while bringing in cheap, unskilled foreign workers to maintain political optics.
Haitian workers will not bring expertise, innovation, or growth to the Dominican agricultural sector. We have plenty of smart and hard-working farmers who go back generations of farming and know how to do it very well.
What Haitians and Dominican Republic workers bring is cheaper, unskilled foreign kabour, which reduces wages, reduces incentives for local employment, and pushes families into tighter financial pressure. In a country already struggling with high unemployment, this is a policy that benefits profits over people and a government that prioritizes political expediency over the welfare of its own citizens.
The pattern is clear, Roosevelt Skerrit and his administration deliberately lie to justify policies that hurt Dominicans while protecting his political agenda. From claiming there is a “shortage of workers” in hotels and construction, to inventing “farmer demand” for cheap, unskilled foreign workers, every lie is designed to obscure reality.
The truth is undeniable, Dominica has unemployed and more than qualified workers ready to fill jobs, yet Roosevelt Skerrit and his administrations choose to import cheap, unskilled foreign workers, devaluing local employment and pushing workers out and driving families to the margins.
Roosevelt Skerrit and his administration’s narrative is not about solving problems; it’s about spinning a story to defend a failing policy and steal an election. The facts, the numbers, and the lived experiences of Dominicans contradict him at every turn.
Roosevelt Skerrit and his administration hope everyday that people believe these lies, but the consequences for our country are real, measurable, and damaging, and the people of Dominica deserve the truth, not political theatre.
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