Quarterly Jamaica Diaspora & Returnee Update — October to December 2014

Published: 2 January 2015 | Jamaica Homes News

Key Takeaways

• Obama’s immigration executive action: DACA expansion and DAPA announced: In a nationally televised address on 20 November 2014, President Obama announced the most significant executive action on immigration since President Reagan’s 1987 amnesty: an expansion of the 2012 DACA programme to cover recipients regardless of their 2012 arrival age, and the creation of a new Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA) programme that would provide a three-year deferral of removal and a work authorisation permit to an estimated four million undocumented parents of US citizens or lawful permanent residents. For Jamaican-American community members who qualified — parents of US-born children who had been in the country for more than five years — the announcement was the most hopeful immigration news since DACA’s 2012 introduction. Implementation was expected to begin in early 2015, though Republican congressional and legal opposition had already mobilised.
• Ferguson non-indictment and Black Lives Matter’s national moment: The St. Louis County grand jury’s 24 November decision not to indict Officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, was followed by nationwide protest marches in dozens of cities, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Atlanta. The Caribbean-American community—whose members had followed the Ferguson case closely since August—engaged with the protests both as bystanders bearing solidarity and as community members whose own experiences of racial profiling and discriminatory policing gave the case deep personal resonance. The phrase “Black Lives Matter,” already circulating since the George Zimmerman acquittal of July 2013, became the movement’s formal name through Q4 2014.
• Eric Garner non-indictment: the Staten Island decision: The Staten Island grand jury’s 3 December decision not to indict the officers involved in Eric Garner’s death — who had been filmed by a bystander placing Garner in a chokehold while he repeated “I can’t breathe” eleven times — produced a second wave of nationwide protest that reinforced the Black Lives Matter movement’s argument about the systemic dimensions of police violence. Garner’s death in Staten Island — across the harbour from the Jamaican-American community’s most densely populated neighbourhood in Brooklyn — made the case particularly close for many community members.
• Obama normalises US–Cuba relations: Caribbean history made: President Obama’s 17 December announcement — coordinated with a statement from Cuban President Raúl Castro — that the United States would restore full diplomatic relations with Cuba, ease travel and remittance restrictions, and work toward removing Cuba from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list, ended fifty-three years of the most consequential Cold War-era diplomatic rupture in the Western Hemisphere. For the broader Caribbean community, including Jamaica, whose CARICOM had maintained its Cuba relationships throughout the embargo, the normalisation signalled a fundamental realignment of US–Caribbean engagement.
• Christmas remittances: a strong close to 2014: Bank of Jamaica preliminary data suggested 2014 closing with total annual remittances of approximately US$2.2 billion, continuing the year-on-year growth trend. The US dollar’s strength, Jamaican-American employment stability, and the December holiday surge combined to produce a positive year’s end. The DAPA announcement’s emotional resonance — even ahead of implementation — may have reinforced diaspora community members’ connection with Jamaica during the Christmas period.
• Jamaica economy: year’s end assessment: Jamaica’s IMF Extended Fund Facility programme, under PM Portia Simpson Miller’s PNP government, continued to pass its quarterly reviews. Unemployment remained elevated but trending downward, and the tourism sector’s strong 2014 performance provided a positive current account contribution. PICA’s returnee facilitation service reported steady Q4 inquiry volumes as the 6th Biennial’s six-month implementation point was assessed.

Introduction: Three Historic Announcements

Q4 2014 produced three announcements that will define the diaspora’s political and social landscape for years: Obama’s immigration executive action, the twin Ferguson and Garner non-indictments and the Black Lives Matter movement’s crystallisation, and the Cuba normalisation. This update draws on Jamaica Gleaner, Jamaica Observer, Bank of Jamaica, PIOJ, MFAFT, and Caribbean diaspora media through 31 December 2014.

DAPA and DACA Expansion: Hope and Uncertainty

Obama’s November 20 address framed the executive action in terms of family, contribution, and America’s identity as a nation of immigrants. For the Jamaican-American community’s most vulnerable members — long-term undocumented residents who had built families, businesses, and community ties in the United States but whose legal status had left them perpetually precarious — the announcement offered the prospect of a three-year breathing space: no deportation risk, the right to work legally, and the documentation needed to drive, to rent, to exist in the formal economy. Community legal organisations immediately began preparing for the anticipated application surge, while cautioning that Republican opposition — congressional and legal — would almost certainly delay or complicate implementation.

Ferguson, Garner, and the Reckoning

The sequence of non-indictments — Ferguson on 24 November, Staten Island on 3 December — produced a cumulative moral weight that the nationwide protests reflected. For Caribbean-American communities, the cases’ significance extended beyond the individual incidents to the structural analysis the Black Lives Matter movement had been building: that the policing of Black communities in America was characterised by a pattern of excessive force, discriminatory stops, and near-total prosecutorial protection for officers that produced racially disparate outcomes at every stage of the criminal justice system. The community’s engagement with this analysis drew on both solidarity with African-American neighbours and their own experience, frequently documented, of racial profiling in their host communities.

Cuba: What Normalisation Means for the Caribbean

Jamaica’s response to the US–Cuba normalisation was broadly welcoming. Prime Minister Simpson Miller’s government — whose CARICOM had pushed for years for the US to end the embargo — welcomed the announcement as a long-overdue recognition of the hemisphere’s diplomatic reality. For Jamaican-Americans doing business with or maintaining family connections across the Caribbean region, the normalisation opened new commercial and travel possibilities. For Jamaica’s tourism sector, the potential for American tourists to Cuba to create a competitive dynamic in the Caribbean market was a consideration that the Tourism Ministry was assessing with both alertness and confidence in Jamaica’s distinctive offering.

Outlook for 2015

2015 opens with DAPA implementation expected to begin, the Black Lives Matter movement likely to remain a defining political phenomenon, Cuba normalisation’s practical details being worked out, the UK election in May, and Jamaica’s 6th Biennial now at its six-month follow-through. We report next from 2 April 2015.

This Quarterly Jamaica Diaspora and Returnee Update is researched and published by Jamaica Homes News. Sources include Jamaica Gleaner, Jamaica Observer, Bank of Jamaica, PIOJ, MFAFT, and PICA. All figures and developments are accurate as of the publication date, 2 January 2015.

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