Diaspora Sent Back 16 Billion In 10 Yrs :It’s Time We Vote, We Want Our Equity Stake..

There is renewed con­ver­sa­tion in JAMAICA about giv­ing the Diaspora the vote.
As with any oth­er issue there are peo­ple lined up on either side of the debate.
Personally I did not give much thought to the issue until recently.
Opposition leader Andrew Holness who recent­ly returned from trips to England and the United States, said it would be impor­tant to give mem­bers of the Diaspora a con­stituent vote. Holness went on to say that the con­stituent vote would mean that the Diaspora have a vote in the Parliament,rather than being spread out over all con­stituen­cies which would have the pow­er to decide the out­come of elec­tions from overseas.
Recently one of the Portia Simpson Miller pro­pa­gan­da Organ the Daily Gleaner Editorial page exco­ri­at­ed the Opposition leader for dar­ing to sug­gest that Jamaicans liv­ing abroad be allowed to vote in nation­al elections.
The Editorial dia­tribe nev­er both­ered to rec­og­nize the dis­tinc­tion Holness made that a Constituency vote would not and could not change the Government.

Having thought about the issue and read some of the pros and cons I do believe mem­bers of the Diaspora should be allowed to vote but not just in a nar­row con­stituen­cy vote.
If every mem­ber of the dias­po­ra , not a for­eign cit­i­zen return to their homes come enu­mer­a­tion time , reg­is­ter to vote then vote come elec­tion time whats to stop them?
This would also be a ter­rif­ic way to dis­man­tle Jamaica’s mul­ti­ple Political Garrisons.
There are no laws to my knowl­edge which pre­vents Jamaicans liv­ing abroad from doing so. Does Geography then become the pre­clud­ing factor?
If so why?
Many mem­bers of the Diaspora work under severe­ly dif­fi­cult con­di­tions to send mon­ey back to Jamaica. One report indi­cates The Jamaican dias­po­ra sent 16 Billion US dol­lars home over the last decade. That Infusion of cash is sec­ond only to the resources derived from Tourism.
Monies sent back to Jamaica impacts the Jamaican econ­o­my in more fun­da­men­tal ways that even tourism does. People imme­di­ate­ly put monies they receive direct­ly into the Jamaican economy.
Sixteen Billion Dollars inject­ed into the econ­o­my and no equi­ty share?

Wednesday’s Gleaner Letter of the day was Titled “Tread Cautiously With Diaspora”. The title by it’s very word­ing sug­gest­ed that mem­bers of the Diaspora are not Jamaicans but Alien crea­tures who should lay no claim to Jamaica, The dis-qual­i­fi­er being that they live abroad.
Many Jamaicans return­ing home to vis­it and to be rein­te­grat­ed into Jamaican soci­ety have com­plained of being treat­ed like outsiders.

Many have been tar­get­ed along those lines for Robberies and even worse.
That aside, the let­ter laid out what I thought was the true intent of the let­ter when the writer stat­ed in the end …
If the idea is ‘to gath­er the intel­lec­tu­al and mate­r­i­al capac­i­ties of Jamaicans, wher­ev­er they are’, there are many ways to do that which do not require any form of eli­gi­bil­i­ty for rep­re­sen­ta­tion. As sug­gest­ed often, one can have ‘funds’ or ‘bonds’ that clear­ly allow the dias­po­ra to make finan­cial par­tic­i­pa­tion in nation­al development.

In oth­er words we will be hap­py to take your mon­ey but you get no say. That mind­set is can­cer­ous. It is rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the gen­er­al ero­sion which has per­me­at­ed our coun­try for decades now. Every per­son who invest in a com­pa­ny or coun­try buys equi­ty share with that investment.
When you pur­chase equi­ty-share you do get to have a say. For years Jamaica has ben­e­fit­ed from Diaspora mon­ey with­out giv­ing any­thing back. That has to stop, whether they like it or not.
All mem­bers of the Diaspora must demand our decade long 16 Billion Dollar equi­ty share in our homeland.
Its not up to the recip­i­ents to decide, it’s our call to make and we should make it.