Antigua's shining future

Thought Leadership by Brian Dobbin, Founder of Citizens International & Elmsbridge

Having lived on and off in the Caribbean for 20 years, with 15 of those in Antigua, I have never seen such a promising pathway ahead of this country.

Growing up in eastern Canada, the word ‘Caribbean’ spoke of sunny days with clear green water sparkling behind a white sandy beach. But, beyond this physical appeal of the destination that Antigua has historically enjoyed, the country now additionally offers an international refuge for several 21st-century plights.

These include medical lockdowns, rising authoritarianism, and an escape from tax-gathering governments that have been creating money for over a decade out of nothing and now need someone to pay their piper.

Not the least of these plights is the West’s culture war on itself. Many of us who consider ourselves classical liberals believe that we won the major ideological conflicts of the 21st century.

We fought successfully against and defeated imperialism in the first world war, fascism in the second, and communism in the cold war.

Liberal capitalist democracy proved itself to be the leading ideology. And as the 20th century drew to a close and the 21st century rolled out, this capitalism helped bring over a billion people out of poverty worldwide. The number of people living in poverty in developing countries went from more than 50 percent in 1990 to less than 15 percent in 2015, thanks to the effects of capitalism.

Technological innovation removed the need for phone lines and cables, and high-speed internet is reaching all parts of the globe thanks to Elon Musk and Starlink. Armed conflict has steadily fallen around the world, and the internet now gives anyone anywhere more information at the press of a button than the Library of Congress contains in all its volumes of printed material.

I believe that if things continue down the same path in the West, Antigua will become the most-desired nation in the world in which to reside.

One would think this would be a period of growing peace and tranquillity in the Western nations that led this change, but that is not the case. Instead, every significant measure of mental health is showing the exact opposite, with depression, drug addiction, and suicide numbers exploding in the USA and that trend spreading elsewhere.

I thought we were entering a post-racial society where everyone would be judged on the character of their soul and not the colour of their skin. But unfortunately, not only are race differences highlighted today more now than when we were growing up, but in fact, differences of every type are taking precedence in a fascination with identity politics.

These same poisonous ideas were prevalent in the first half of the 20th century and led to Stalin’s capitalist pogroms and Mao’s Cultural Revolution, resulting in more than 50 million deaths.

Like many, I struggle to identify what went wrong, but a simple explanation and one that rings true is the rise of affluence and the rot that has spread from Western schools and the college system. Quite simply, activists need things to be active about, and even though people have been better off in virtually every major way over the last generation, it has not stopped the growth of a victim culture in which someone is made to feel better by the more oppressed they convince themselves they are.

Maybe I am wearing rose-coloured glasses, but it seems to me that Antigua has been doing a good job so far of avoiding this ideological decay. The rise we are seeing in Western clients in the citizenship programmes also reinforces this hypothesis.

What was exclusively a Chinese-market-led industry 15 to 20 years ago evolved into a travel-benefits industry with more clients from places like the CIS, MENA and African nations. In the last five-plus years, our business has seen a sea change to mostly clients from North America and Western Europe.

In speaking to these clients, almost all are property buyers. While they are not trying to leave their home country per se, they are nervous about the changes they are seeing being embraced by left-leaning governments and legacy media that have lost all impartiality. These are not right-leaning or left-leaning ideologues but rather people who feel they are being pushed out of the middle.

We joke with our clients that the 1980s have not entirely disappeared in Antigua - and we mean the sensibilities have not changed so dramatically in the last 10 to 15 years here as it has in the feeder markets that these new citizens and property owners originate from.

As has been proven again and again, it is the people that make the difference when it comes to economic prosperity, and I feel like we are really sitting in the right place at the right time to attract these international economic immigrants.

I believe that if things continue down the same path in the West, Antigua will become the most-desired nation in the world in which to reside. So, let’s hope we keep our pathway clear of other people’s problems and other countries’ issues and we are able to capitalise on this position we enjoy.