Published: 2 July 2016 | Jamaica Homes News
🚨 BREAKING: UNITED KINGDOM VOTES TO LEAVE THE EUROPEAN UNION
Nine days ago, on 23 June 2016, the United Kingdom voted 51.9 per cent to 48.1 per cent to leave the European Union in a historic referendum that produced immediate political and economic shock across Britain. Prime Minister David Cameron, who campaigned for Remain, announced his resignation the following morning. The pound sterling has fallen sharply. British-Jamaican community organisations are assessing what Brexit means for their members’ residency rights, employment, and remittance-sending capacity. We cover the immediate aftermath in full below. This is the defining event for British-Jamaican communities as we publish this edition.
Key Takeaways
- Brexit: a seismic result for British-Jamaican communities: The 23 June referendum result — 52 per cent Leave on a 72 per cent turnout — was a profound shock to the British-Jamaican community, which had voted overwhelmingly Remain. The immediate consequences include David Cameron’s resignation, Theresa May’s emergence as the most likely replacement, a historic fall in the pound sterling to below $1.32, and deep uncertainty about the rights of non-EU Commonwealth citizens in a post-Brexit UK immigration framework. Community organisations moved immediately to provide guidance and to press for clarity on settled status and rights of abode.
- 7th Biennial Jamaica Diaspora Conference: a landmark gathering: The 7th Biennial Jamaica Diaspora Conference, hosted in Kingston and Montego Bay in June 2016, was the largest, best-attended, and most substantive in the conference series’ history. Thousands of diaspora representatives from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the wider Caribbean world gathered around working group sessions on trade and investment, diaspora philanthropy, health sector partnerships, educational exchange, and digital engagement. The conference produced a detailed set of working group commitments and established the advisory committee structures that will track implementation toward the 8th Biennial in 2018.
- PM Holness’s Jamaica: 100 days into office: Prime Minister Andrew Holness’s Jamaica Labour Party government, which won the February 25, 2016 general election by the narrowest possible majority — one seat — had by the time of this publication completed approximately 130 days in office. The new government’s economic programme, framed around continuity with the IMF Extended Fund Facility while adding a JLP-specific emphasis on housing, infrastructure, and economic growth, was beginning to take shape. The returnee and diaspora engagement agenda inherited from the PNP government was being assessed and reoriented.
- Trump secures Republican nomination: immigration at centre stage: Donald Trump’s formal securing of the Republican presidential nomination — confirmed in late May and formalised at the Republican National Convention scheduled for July — had made immigration the defining issue of the US presidential campaign. The contrast with Hillary Clinton’s immigration policy positions — including a path to citizenship for the undocumented and maintenance of DACA — could not be sharper. Caribbean community voter mobilisation was at a high pitch, with naturalization campaigns targeting Jamaican-American permanent residents across all diaspora centres.
- Remittances: Q2 2016 positive despite sterling shock: Bank of Jamaica data for Q2 2016 showed continued positive year-on-year remittance growth from the US dollar source market, with the strong US dollar and sustained Jamaican-American employment supporting healthy flows. UK-sourced flows had been positive through most of Q2 but the post-referendum sterling fall in the final days of June introduced a new uncertainty that would play through Q3 and beyond. Overall 2016 was on track for a strong annual total, estimated to approach or exceed the approximately US$2.4 billion level.
- 7th Biennial follow-up: implementation begins immediately: The working group sessions’ commitments from the 7th Biennial were immediately translated into action plans, with MFAFT’s diaspora engagement teams convening advisory committee inaugural meetings before the end of June. The Biennial’s digital engagement stream — targeting diaspora community members who cannot attend the physical conference — committed to platform development that would keep the dialogue open through the two-year inter-conference period. The road to the 8th Biennial in June 2018 begins now.
Introduction: Brexit Changes Everything
We had planned to open this edition with the 7th Biennial’s landmark outcomes. Brexit has moved to the top of the agenda. The Q2 2016 reporting period was — until its final ten days — a quarter defined by the positive momentum of the Biennial, Jamaica’s successful democratic transition to a new government, and the steady advance of the diaspora engagement agenda. The 23 June referendum result has reset all that. This update draws on Jamaica Gleaner, Jamaica Observer, Bank of Jamaica, PIOJ, MFAFT, BBC, Caribbean National Weekly, and diaspora community sources through 30 June 2016.
Brexit: The Immediate Aftermath
The Leave campaign’s victory in the UK referendum was not expected by most British-Jamaican community leaders, who had assessed the polling as pointing, however narrowly, to a Remain outcome. The morning of 24 June 2016 — David Cameron’s resignation statement in Downing Street, the pound’s fall to its lowest level in thirty years, the markets’ immediate shock — produced a moment of genuine community disorientation. British-Jamaican community members whose families had built lives in the UK across three and four generations were confronted with a vote that, in its Leave campaign’s more strident messaging, had questioned the belonging of immigrants and their descendants in ways that resonated painfully with the community’s history.
The immediate practical concerns were multiple. Did Brexit affect the rights of Commonwealth citizens already resident in the UK? No: Commonwealth citizens’ rights in the UK derive from UK domestic law, not EU membership, and are not automatically affected by Brexit. Were Caribbean community members’ rights of abode, work, and social security at risk? Not immediately, and not from Brexit directly — but the government’s post-Brexit immigration policy framework was entirely undefined, and in that uncertainty, concerns were legitimate. Community legal organisations began providing guidance sessions, and MFAFT’s diaspora team moved quickly to provide Jamaica-specific information to members of the community in the UK.
7th Biennial Jamaica Diaspora Conference
The 7th Biennial Jamaica Diaspora Conference, held in Kingston and Montego Bay in June 2016, was a landmark event in the history of Jamaica’s engagement with its global diaspora. The conference’s scale — thousands of participants from across the Jamaican diaspora world — and the depth of its working group sessions reflected the accumulation of a decade of conference-series relationship building. The Holness government’s hosting of the 7th Biennial — its first major diaspora engagement event in office — set the tone for an administration that had committed to the diaspora partnership as a policy priority.
Working group outputs across trade facilitation, diaspora philanthropy frameworks, health sector linkage, educational exchange, and digital platform development produced a set of tracked commitments with named advisory committee leads and reporting timelines. The Biennial’s opening address committed the government to a six-month implementation report, and the advisory committee inaugural meetings were scheduled for before the end of June. The next conference — the 8th Biennial, targeted for June 2018 — was already being referenced as the horizon against which implementation progress would be assessed.
PM Holness and Jamaica’s New Government
Andrew Holness’s JLP won Jamaica’s February 25, 2016 general election by a single seat — 32 to 31 — bringing a new government to power after four-and-a-half years of PNP administration under PM Portia Simpson Miller. Holness, at 44 the youngest PM in Jamaica’s history at the time of his first term, took office with an economic programme of continuity with the IMF reform agenda combined with a JLP-specific emphasis on housing delivery, infrastructure investment, and private sector-led growth. Four months into the new government’s mandate, the early indicators were positive: the IMF programme’s quarterly reviews were passing, unemployment was continuing its gradual decline, and the tourism sector was performing well.
For returnees and diaspora investors, the government transition produced an assessment period — familiar from all political transitions — in which the new administration’s specific commitments to the returnee facilitation agenda, the PICA investment facilitation framework, and the diaspora engagement infrastructure established by the PNP were reviewed and, in most cases, confirmed and continued. The Holness government’s hosting of the 7th Biennial was the clearest signal of that continuity.
US Election: Campaign at Its Peak
Donald Trump’s formal securing of the Republican nomination and Hillary Clinton’s expected Democratic nomination — with her primary contest against Bernie Sanders effectively concluded by the end of Q2 2016 — set the stage for a general election campaign whose immigration policy dimensions were the most consequential for Jamaican-American communities of any presidential race in recent memory. Trump’s proposals for mass deportation, DACA rescission, and a border wall contrasted directly with Clinton’s commitment to a path to citizenship and DACA’s continuation. Caribbean community mobilisation — voter registration, naturalization completion, and civic engagement — was at its peak intensity as the summer campaign began.
Outlook for Q3 2016
Q3 2016 brings the Rio Olympics — where Usain Bolt will seek an unprecedented third consecutive sprint treble — the intensifying US election campaign, the UK’s post-Brexit political settling, and the 7th Biennial’s first three months of implementation. It is a quarter whose opening tone is uncertainty and whose potential range of outcomes — for the diaspora in the US and in the UK — is wider than at any point in recent memory. We report next from 2 October 2016.
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, BBC, Caribbean National Weekly, and PICA. All figures and developments are accurate as of the publication date, 2 July 2016.
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