Prime Minister Gaston Browne is urging Antiguans and Barbudans living overseas to consider returning home, arguing that economic growth and changing global conditions now present an opportunity to retain and reclaim national talent.
Speaking on the Browne and Browne Show on Pointe FM on Saturday, Browne said recent international policy shifts and uncertainty should be seen not only as challenges, but as a moment for Antigua and Barbuda to strengthen itself through what he described as a “brain gain.”
He was referencing an article written by Premier of Nevis Hon. Mark Brantley.
“There’s an opportunity now for more of our talent to remain at home, and even for some who are abroad to come back home to build our country,” Browne said, describing the moment as one that could help accelerate national development.
He said Antigua and Barbuda is in a far stronger position than in previous decades, with improved economic performance, expanded educational opportunities and a broader range of services now available locally.
“In the past, our people had practically no avenue other than to travel to the United Kingdom, the United States or Canada to get a university education,” Browne said. “Today, you can get a university education right here in Antigua.”
The prime minister also pointed to advances in healthcare, noting that procedures which once required overseas travel are now being performed locally. “There are many medical procedures that we are now doing here that people don’t have to travel abroad for anymore,” he said.
Browne said global changes in commerce and technology have also reduced the need for physical migration, citing the growth of e-commerce and remote transactions. He said Antiguans and Barbudans no longer need to leave the country to access goods, services or economic opportunity in the way they once did.
He urged citizens to recognise the quality of life available at home, highlighting the country’s natural environment and improving living standards. “On the basis that you have a few dollars here, you can enjoy a standard of living that is second to none,” Browne said.
The prime minister said encouraging skilled nationals to stay or return is essential to sustaining growth and preventing the loss of human capital needed for continued development.
“In every disappointment there is a blessing,” Browne said. “I just hope we see this as an opportunity to make our country stronger, more united, and to accelerate growth and development.”
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What say you, as the newly appointed Diaspora Minister for the ABLP Dr. Dave Ray?
I’m surprised that the Prime Minister is sort of stepping on your newly polished toes in regards to encouraging the Antiguan Diaspora to return home.
Or has Gaston Browne simply acquired a “third” Ministerial position after his Finance and Leadership jobs?
DAVE WHEY YOU DEYA? 🤣🤣🤣
Dat GASSY DREAD weed got U acting like you’re on fentanyl. Pull your sagging pants up Bwoi. Your polka dots pink boxers are showing on Tic Tok with your fake locs.
We love your Halloween costume though.
Is Dr. Hairdresser Ray the fashionista sista your wardrobe consultant?
Please lay off the blunt laced with fentanyl. It’s worst than weed soaked in embalming fluid, PCP.
The day that data is readily available which allows me to make a judgement on what’s really happening in the country, and not what political parties says.
The day I seldom encounter rude and obnoxious government officials and employees.
The day when I don’t need to see a Parliamentary Minister or his or her assistant to obtain government services
The day I can get bank services without standing in line or waiting for almost an hour to speak to a bank officer.
The day I can get fresh fruits and vegetables as well as to grow some for some myself.
The day I don’t feel like a second class citizen in my land of birth because I have dark skin.
The day when as a locally born, I’m not are placed at a disadvantage to non-African people from abroad.
I’ll be among the Returning Antiguans and Barbudans.
If not I’ll continue to enjoy touring Napa and camping under the redwood trees.
Natty Dread · Gassy Dread. Never Bow. Flames in Soul. Jah Guide him now. Truth and Love be him guide. Its time to look at home
We should have been encouraging Antiguans and Barbudans to return home long ago and give them the same opportunities and favourable circumstances that we so often give to foreigners. Many Antiguans and Barbudans would love to come home permanently and contribute to our country but they are not prepared to give underhand and clandestine gifts in order to get accepted and started.
Gaston Browne,you talk too damn much.You surely have the gift of gabbing.I listened to a recording of yours a week ago.You were ridiculing Antiguans and Barbudans living in the USA.Now,you are saying we should return.Return to what? What is there for those who want to return? When you and your greedy horses ate it all.By the way.What has become of the Bronco situation and Public Works? Is your wife,as a Substantive Minister still sits on West Indies Oil Board? How could she be doing that and be in control of so many Portfolios? There is no wonder the vehicle situations were allowed to pass her by. I guaranteed ,if she was not your wife she would have been let go.
Come home and contribute to your country nothing wrong with that….Donald Trump has shaken up the world and has made alot of governments realize the US can turn their back on us we need to be more self sufficient. We still wanna have good relations with the US and China but we must do infact need to be more self sufficient. These Antiguans with skills and knowledge can be the help we need towards such a goal. Well Said PM..
You need to send home all these foreigners first to make space for Antiguans boss,purge the country……Let every country look for their citizens
You ask the question, come home to do what.So they can establish themselves and have a better life.What are they doing for themselves in America. I met a young lady at a fruit stand while I was talking to the cashier she ask me where I was from, I told her Antigua she said to me that she haven’t been back home in 17 years. Then she went on to pay for her groceries, guess what she gave the cashier her food stamp card, I’m saying this to say many of them not doing much to help themselves. They will never invite you where they live They will tell you meet me at McDonald’s. What a life.
@,Shirley
The US is a massive place, massive.
The beauty about the US, is that there is a great job for you somewhere if you’re willing to move. The problem that many island people suffer with in the US, is that they are way too family oriented and do not have the mind power to move from around their friends and family.
To make it in America, you have to be a go getter and globe trotter. And you must expand your view point of the world. Too many people are still sheltered and scared when they come here. These types of people suffer in the states.
It’s a very aggressive culture. You must move with it,or get left behind.
Return to what? A lot of the high skill jobs are outsourced even labour is being outsourced in cases. So what do they have to return to?
@ Shirley Reid,
The fact you were buying groceries at a place that takes food stamp card says a lot about you.
When me and my eight (8) sibling and my single mother arrived in the VI with our Green Card in the 70s and came on to America we had food stamps for a few about a year.
It was the food stamps supplement that enabled myself to be a double IVY and all my sibling went to college graduates;
Now that I sold my company and enjoying my grandchildren, with wife an author and professor and my sons at the top of game as engineers; why would I want to come back to this hell hole?
When where I reside no store takes food stamps.
From your experience with the lady with the food stamps, that’s an indication in the neighborhood you were in.
As a Antiguan living or visiting such a neighborhood says a lot about you.
I suspect you may very well fit into the inefficiency corruption that’s pervasive in Antigua and Barbuda.
No one in their right mind, that’s comfortable with family members around them has any interest except those who want to show off.
Inspite of what Anerica is bs is further becoming, is no alore in being in Antigua.
I’d rather be in a place here I’m not judged by the clothes I wear and the vehicle I drive
It is sad that you have no reason to offer for individuals to return to Antigua and Barbuda but the food stamp encounter.
The Prime Minister’s appeal for Antiguans abroad to “come home” rings hollow when the country he governs is failing its people in the most basic ways. Patriotism cannot substitute for water, safety, justice, or decent healthcare.
Across Antigua in 2025, citizens are still suffering relentless water cuts, with some communities going weeks without a reliable supply. At the same time, the cost of living has exploded beyond reason. Antigua is now one of the most expensive places in the Caribbean, yet salaries remain stuck in the past. Groceries, rent, electricity, and fuel drain every dollar ordinary families earn. The Prime Minister invites us home, but to what—economic struggle and daily indignity?
Our health system is in crisis, not only because of resources but because of attitude and professionalism. Confidentiality is treated as a suggestion rather than a duty. I personally know of a nurse who disclosed a patient’s HIV status without shame. In another incident, ambulance personnel and a district nurse stood outside an ambulance discussing a patient’s private medical details as though they were exchanging street gossip. These are not rare lapses; they expose a culture where dignity for patients has little value.
Meanwhile crime tightens its grip and justice remains absent. A foreign national was robbed, beaten, scammed and ultimately lost her life. Teenagers have been brutally murdered—one on an Antiguan beach, another found in Fig Tree—and their killers remain free. Richard “Monk” Whinfield was murdered in Swetes almost a year ago with no arrest. Antigua is fast becoming a place where criminals act without fear and families are left to grieve without closure.
This decay flows directly from the tone set at the top. When a Prime Minister tells his ministers to “enrich themselves,” he normalizes corruption and betrays the very idea of public service. The police force, which should be the last line of protection, is itself plagued by lawlessness. A retiree living abroad, preparing to return home, hired Corporal Peter Roberts—who was moonlighting as a builder, electrician and plumber—to construct his house. Roberts robbed that gentleman, took his money, and left the property looking like a demolition site. The matter was reported directly to the Commissioner of Police, and after six months the force has done nothing. That is not incompetence; that is protection of wrongdoing.
So the question must be asked plainly: what exactly is the attraction for Antiguans to return?
Unreliable water? Hospitals where privacy is violated? Streets where murder goes unpunished? A government comfortable with corruption and a police service that shields its own?
Antiguans abroad have built stable lives through sacrifice and hard work. They will not abandon that to come back to a country where standards are collapsing and accountability is a joke. If the Prime Minister truly wants his people home, he must first restore order, integrity and basic services.
Until then, his invitation is not a vision—it is an insult.
@ Young Antiguan Communist,
Gaston was cussing them out on an audio last week (get a hold of it)? A master of manipulation
Now he is calling them brain-drain and welcoming them back; just after he said they were living in basements and on food stamps
You want people to return home but have people who studied for certain areas wasting away Im government offices for 2300 a month can’t even get the 4075 promised after getting educated and you want people to come home to that gimme a break good sir
We will return home when you vacate the premises!
Antiguans will not return as long as you’re in office 😒
So, what’s it going to be?
You leaving or what?🤔
Come home to what? The top positions are all taken by outsiders. Can’t hear our accents anywhere that matters. Like the island is kidnapped.
Who knows what I am going to say here?
Some a them may as well pack up and return to their land of birth. I’ve been to NY for Labor day many a time, and got totally embarrassed seeing the way some of my people living, to which I say to myself instead of living like this, why not return home? but i guess it’s all about, letting it known you are living in the Big Apple.
@Wadadli4ever, I thank you for your erudite and totally accurate observations of what’s happening in my beloved country. It’s heartbreaking and a real travesty to those of us who have put their trust in the authorities and our politicians.
One thing I can guarantee you, is that you won’t get any government members, supporters or their myopic defenders respond to anything you’ve correctly commented on.
That’s the real reason the country is spiralling down the criminal drain…
Recruited by Satan to be an #advocate!
@Winston A. Southwell
@Shirley Reid
@Carvaa
Winston A. Southwell the neighborhood has nothing to do with where SNAP/EBT Debit Cards are accepted. Every major food chain across America, online or brick & mortar accepts SNAP/EBT…Amazon to Whole Foods to Trader Joe’s to TAR-jaaay (Target). Do you shop at any of these #High_End businesses?
Whenever you shop at these high end grocery stores that offer KOSHER PRODUCTS, do you pay a fee-for-service (fancy wording for a tax) when you purchase these products and which COMMUJITY is the recipient of this fee, tax?
@Shirley Reid the vast majority of SNAP/EBT Debit cards are White Americans at about 40% of the recipients. Judging an individual based up looks is as asinine as looking at the moon and calling it a lollipop.
@Carvaa ‘ignorance is still blissful,’ meaning that, to enjoy the bliss of anything, one has to be silent/ignorant and learn the essence of what they’re observing.
In the Big Apple, ground zero for the Cosa Nostra roots in America, for years, Vincent ‘Chin’ Gigante former boss of the Genovese Family ACTED like he was a crazy, homeless bum roaming the BIG APPLE in his pj’s feeding pigeons on the street.
Now, since you’re so astute when it comes to criminality, have you ever seen a CIA or NSA Agent roaming around Antigua?
LOOPHOLES FOR THE RICH…
Ironically, billionaires, farmers, 501(C) Corporations, Ivy League Universities, CHURCHES; all, every last one of them are subsidized by the Taxpayers of America.
In the case of billionaires, millionaires they fall into particular TAX BRACKETS which allows them in some cases, not to pay any federal taxes or very little.
CPA’s and tax preparers will fudge the numbers regarding deductions etc to pay as little taxes as possible.
Whenever you srart an LLC, C-Corp, S-Corp, Sole Proprietorship you’ll receive at least a five year reprieve from being LIABLE for most taxes which your company is required to file.
My dear folks, if ignorance was a crypto or blockchain everyone of you would be billionaires.
Did I #stutter or #flutter like a headless chicken running around an OBEAH SEANCE doing my #Ignorance_Shuffle!?
Jumbee_Picknee aka Ras Smood
De’ole Dutty Peg🦶🏿Garrat_Bastard
Vere Edwards
Prime Minister Browne, thank you for reinforcing that opportunities are here at home and for encouraging skilled Antiguans abroad to return. As a returning national, I made the intentional decision to come back to Antigua in 2020 because I believe in this vision and the direction our country is heading. Following your initial remarks on this matter last Monday, I submitted a letter to your administration via email last Thursday outlining my journey and my interest in contributing meaningfully and participating in the opportunities you’ve highlighted. I hope it will be considered. I am ready to build, invest, and grow with Antigua and Barbuda.
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