VI ‘can no longer afford Belongership to be synonymous with being a VIslander’- Skelton-Cline
Mr Skelton-Cline said this is something he will be recommending and advocating for from “whatever seat I sit in”.
He made this suggestion during the November 11, 2026, airing of his show on ZBVI 780 AM.
Persons should be free at some point
“Belongership status needs to be divorced from Immigration and Labour in that what we need to afford persons who come to this country for economic reasons, we need to afford them the opportunity to, at some point in time, be free from immigration control and seeking annual permits,” he argued.
Mr Skelton-Cline clarified he was laying down the framework, not knowing all the particulars, as that is for the experts to do, starting with a policy.
“What we can no longer afford to do is to make Belongership synonymous with being a Virgin Islander…going forward, this is going to benefit existing Belongers; this is going to benefit Ancestral Belongers, or Ancestral persons, Belongers who have been here by time or tenure.”
We must begin population management
He added that this should not affect whatever rights and privileges existing Belongers have.
“We are a small nation; we must get our hearts and our hands around and begin to manage population, growth and development.”
Mr Skelton-Cline doubled down, saying the current apparatus must be divorced from what it means to be a Belonger.
“We must divorce that for making persons to be able to operate seamlessly outside of immigration and labour control.”
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15 Responses to “VI ‘can no longer afford Belongership to be synonymous with being a VIslander’- Skelton-Cline ”
GO back to Detroit!
Organizer: "Welcome to the OECS Games; Virgin Islanders can form a queue here".
Kid: "I'm on the Virgin Islands team. But I'm not a Virgin Islander".
Organizer: Oh?
Kid: "Yes, well, I was born & raised in the Virgin Islands & am a citizen there. But I'm not a Virgin Islander. That's for other people."
Organizer: OK, I suppose you can queue up in the "Others" line. Good luck.
New addition to the language: BVIslander Supremacist?
UTOPIA !!!
You are an outsider by choice. Enjoy!
We need to stop this Virgin Islander not Virgin Islander nonsense. No one can trace indigenous roots here.
Virgin Islander is a made up thing with made up rules that keep changing just to suit a certain group of people.
There are people that just live here that are more Virgin Islander than those that fit some stupidly complicated set of exclusivity rules, that no one understands anymore.