Jamaicans In Diaspora In No Hurry To Return Home

[adapt­ed]: scenes from Jamaica:

I yell and scream about the need to low­er, if not erad­i­cate crime in Jamaica for years. I am heart­ened to see that oth­er medi­ums are rec­og­niz­ing what is hap­pen­ing and report­ing on it.

I believe and main­tain that the astro­nom­i­cal­ly high crime rate does impact the num­ber of Jamaicans return­ing home. High inci­dences of crime also neg­a­tive­ly affect invest­ment from over­seas prospects. The fact that Nations like the United States, Canada and England have decid­ed to use depor­ta­tion as a means of remov­ing some of it’s crim­i­nals, has had dire con­se­quences for our Island Nation.

Jamaica’s Blue Mountain Range:

The unwill­ing­ness and lack of resolve on the part of Jamaican Authorities to design and exe­cute seri­ous anti-crime Policies geared at clamp­ing down on the Island’s crim­i­nals has only served to make the prob­lem worse. Several International Rating Agencies have report­ed on this includ­ing Transparency International which rat­ed Jamaica 84 % cor­rupt out of a pos­si­ble one hundred.

This does not bode well for invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties. It also presents a seri­ous prob­lem for Law abid­ing Jamaicans and those wish­ing to return when the per­cep­tion remains that the Legislators do not want to improve the sys­tem because they are afraid their crim­i­nal con­duct will come to an end.

Yahoo news report­ed on this issue some­time ago:

Irwine Clare, man­ag­ing direc­tor of the New York-based advo­ca­cy group Caribbean Immigrant Services, believes crime is the biggest prob­lem keep­ing Jamaicans from reset­tling on the island. “We rec­og­nize the impact of what crime and vio­lence has done to our beloved nation. It is cause for major con­cern. But we are very much a God-fear­ing peo­ple so we nev­er give up in spite of all the odds that are against us,” Clare said in a tele­phone inter­view. “It is also for us in the dias­po­ra to help find a solu­tion.“http://​news​.yahoo​.com/​j​a​m​a​i​c​a​-​f​r​e​t​s​-​o​v​e​r​-​s​l​o​w​d​o​w​n​-​r​e​t​u​r​n​i​n​g​-​i​s​l​a​n​d​ers

When I talk about crime par­tic­u­lar­ly in Jamaica I nev­er do so in the abstract, I don’t talk or write because I like to hear myself talk or want to be seen. I do so because I am pas­sion­ate about Jamaica, I am pas­sion­ate about the coun­try I grew up in, the good­ness of the peo­ple, that we did­n’t have two pen­nies to rub against each did­n’t mat­ter, at least to me.

Scenes of Jamaica many of it’s inhab­i­tants nev­er see:

We basi­cal­ly accept­ed that we were poor, and we aspired to change our lives through hard work and edu­ca­tion. However over the last cou­ple of decades we have watched as our coun­try has been dras­ti­cal­ly trans­formed from that peace­ful fun dia­mond in the Caribbean sea, to a place peo­ple talk about with trep­i­da­tion , scorn, and a place to be shunned.

Our coun­try is now broke, inca­pable of pay­ing pub­lic sec­tor workers,even though they have been forced to accept manda­to­ry wage freezes. As I wrote pre­vi­ous­ly, there would be some sem­blance of hope going for­ward, if the peo­ple in pow­er under­stood that the sin­gle great­est dan­ger to Jamaica is the exis­ten­tial threat crime poses.

It is indeed a nation­al secu­ri­ty threat when the greater part of the coun­try’s net earn­ings are used to ser­vice the inter­est on the suf­fo­cat­ing debt. Over recent months some pub­li­ca­tions to include the Chicago Tribune have report­ed on the seri­ous­ness of Jamaica’s debt cri­sis, which the Tribune say is worse than that of Greece.

So while the Overseas media reports on the seri­ous­ness of the chal­lenges Jamaica faces , there is no change in the way the lead­ers go about doing busi­ness. Even many of us who reside in oth­er coun­tries have got­ten sucked into the false nar­ra­tive of (jamaica nice) this bull**** is a mis­nomer of the worst order.

With about the same pop­u­la­tion as the city of Chicago Jamaica records between 3 & 5 times the num­ber of homi­cides annu­al­ly, depend­ing on the year. And homi­cides are just a sin­gle com­po­nent of Jamaica’s crime cri­sis. Rapes, assaults, shoot­ings, child abuse, spousal abuse, rob­beries, are just a few of the oth­er seri­ous vio­lent offences which has now result­ed in a 50% drop in the num­ber of peo­ple return­ing to the coun­try of their birth to live out their retirement.

If the num­ber of peo­ple who want­ed to return dries up, it will be a seri­ous blow to the coun­try’s floun­der­ing econ­o­my, con­sid­er­ing return­ing res­i­dents con­tribute up to 15% of the coun­try’s for­eign exchange inflow.

About 3 mil­lion Jamaicans live abroad, more than the 2.7 mil­lion who live on the Island. The $2 bil­lion they send home each year is a major source of invest­ment and wealth for this poor island. It accounts for more than 13 per­cent of GDP. The Bank of Jamaica says retirees who move back home are a key fac­tor, esti­mat­ing that their pen­sions pro­vide 15 per­cent of the inflow of for­eign currency.

I hate to say I told you so.….……But whether you like it or not, I have been warn­ing that we would one day get here. We sim­ply can­not build a nation on drink , drug, sex, music, and mur­der, not to sug­gest that those are all our coun­try has to offer, there sim­ply is too much of the aforementioned.