Quarterly Jamaica Diaspora & Returnee Update — January to March 2018

Published: 2 April 2018 | Jamaica Homes News

Key Takeaways

• Trump’s ‘shithole countries’ remark: Caribbean diaspora outrage and PM Holness cancels White House visit: President Trump’s reported statement on 11 January 2018, during an Oval Office meeting on immigration, that he did not want immigrants from “shithole countries” — a reference to Haiti, El Salvador, and African nations — produced immediate and intense outrage across Caribbean diaspora communities globally. Prime Minister Andrew Holness cancelled a planned visit to the White House in direct response to the remarks, a diplomatic signal widely interpreted as the most direct expression of governmental protest available to a small nation in its relationship with the United States.
• DACA: Congress fails, Dreamers’ fate unresolved: Congress’s March 5, 2018 deadline to legislate a replacement for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals programme — which Trump had announced the rescission of in September 2017 — passed without legislative action. Despite multiple Senate votes on competing immigration proposals in February 2018, none achieved the 60-vote threshold required to advance. The approximately 700,000 DACA recipients, including Jamaican-origin Dreamers, entered the second quarter of 2018 in the same legal limbo that had existed since the September 2017 rescission announcement, their fate now dependent on the courts rather than Congress.
• Windrush: the scandal surfaces: Reports of Caribbean community members in the United Kingdom being wrongfully denied their legal rights — subjected to deportation threats, denied NHS care, and stripped of employment despite decades of lawful residence — began to attract sustained national media attention in Q1 2018. The Guardian’s investigative reporting, which had begun surfacing individual cases in late 2017, was building into the larger pattern that would become the defining public crisis of the spring. Caribbean community advocates had been documenting these cases for years; the media and political recognition of the Windrush scandal was now, belatedly, arriving.
• 8th Biennial Conference: final planning for June 2018: The 8th Biennial Jamaica Diaspora Conference, scheduled for June 2018 at the Montego Bay Convention Centre, entered its final planning phase through Q1 2018. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade and the Jamaica Diaspora Institute were completing the logistical, thematic, and community engagement preparations for what is expected to be one of the largest and most substantively ambitious biennial gatherings in the conference’s sixteen-year history. Registration was open and diaspora community organisations across North America, the UK, and the Caribbean were mobilising their members to attend.
• US government shutdown: DACA-linked crisis: The US federal government shut down briefly from 19 to 22 January 2018, when Senate Democrats blocked a continuing resolution over the absence of DACA protections in the spending package. The three-day shutdown — the first since 2013 — reflected the intensity of the DACA political conflict and the Democrats’ willingness to use the appropriations process as leverage for Dreamer protections. The shutdown’s brief duration limited its direct economic impact on Jamaica’s diaspora communities, though federal government workers and contractors experienced three days without pay.
• Remittances and returnees: steady performance heading into 2018: Jamaica’s remittance inflows for Q1 2018 maintained their positive trajectory, building on the strong 2017 annual performance. PICA’s Returning Residents facilitation service continued to process steady inquiry volumes from British-Jamaican and Jamaican-American prospective returnees, and Jamaica’s tourism sector maintained the positive momentum established through 2017 as the Q1 winter season performed well.

Introduction: The Shock of the ‘Shithole’ Remark

The first quarter of 2018 was defined, more than anything else, by a single reported presidential remark that landed with the force of confirmation across Caribbean diaspora communities. When The Washington Post reported on 11 January 2018 that President Trump had, during an Oval Office meeting on immigration reform, asked why the United States should accept immigrants from “shithole countries” — referring to Haiti, El Salvador, and African nations — the outrage was immediate, global, and profound. For Jamaican-American communities who had been living through two years of escalating anti-immigrant rhetoric and enforcement, the remark crystallised, in the most explicit terms yet, the racial and national hierarchies that informed the administration’s immigration worldview. This update draws on Jamaica Gleaner, Jamaica Observer, Bank of Jamaica, PIOJ, MFAFT, and Caribbean diaspora media through 31 March 2018.

The ‘Shithole’ Remark: PM Holness’s Response

President Trump’s reported “shithole countries” comment on 11 January 2018 — which he initially denied and then partially walked back, claiming he had used “tough” language without specifying the reported phrasing — was corroborated by multiple members of Congress who were present at the Oval Office meeting, and was unanimously condemned by Caribbean and African governments. The United Nations’ human rights office described the remarks as “shocking and shameful”, and the African Union demanded an apology.

Prime Minister Andrew Holness’s cancellation of a planned visit to the White House in direct response to the remarks was one of the most direct diplomatic responses available to a small Caribbean nation managing a relationship of profound dependency with the United States. Holness’s statement made clear that Jamaica expected the respect owed to a sovereign nation and its people, and that the “shithole” characterisation was incompatible with the conduct of diplomatic relations between equals. The cancellation was widely welcomed across Jamaican civil society and the diaspora as a principled stand that sacrificed access in defence of national dignity.

For the Jamaican-American community, the remark’s significance extended far beyond the diplomatic insult. The comment confirmed what many in the community had long argued about the racial subtext of the administration’s immigration restrictionism: that the preference for immigrants from “countries like Norway” expressed in the same meeting was not merely about immigration management but about the racial composition of the immigration flow. The “shithole” remark stripped away the policy language and exposed the racial hierarchy that organised the administration’s immigration preferences in terms that were impossible to misread or explain away.

DACA: Congressional Failure and Continued Limbo

The Trump administration’s September 5, 2017 announcement that it was rescinding the DACA programme, with a six-month wind-down period ending March 5, 2018, had been intended to force Congress to act on a legislative replacement. Congress failed. Through January and February 2018, the Senate considered multiple competing immigration proposals: a bipartisan compromise by Senators Collins and Graham that combined DACA protections with border security measures; a narrower DACA-only fix; and the administration’s preferred framework, which conditioned DACA protections on major cuts to legal immigration, border wall funding, and the elimination of the diversity visa lottery. None achieved the 60-vote Senate threshold required to advance.

The March 5 deadline passed without legislative action, leaving DACA’s fate in the hands of the federal courts. Multiple federal district judges had issued injunctions requiring the administration to continue accepting DACA renewal applications, pending the outcome of legal challenges to the rescission decision. The administration was appealing these rulings. The Supreme Court had not yet agreed to hear the case. The approximately 700,000 DACA recipients — who had built their lives in the United States on the basis of the programme’s protection — entered Q2 2018 in a continuing state of legal uncertainty that showed no sign of early resolution.

The Windrush Scandal: A Crisis Building

Through Q1 2018, the accumulating evidence of systematic harm to Caribbean community members in the United Kingdom was receiving increasing journalistic attention. The Guardian’s investigative reporting had been surfacing individual cases since late 2017: stories of British Caribbean citizens who had lived in the UK for fifty years but could not prove their right to be there; who had been denied NHS treatment for cancer; who had lost their jobs and homes when employers and landlords were required to check immigration status under the hostile environment’s right-to-work and right-to-rent requirements; who had been detained in immigration removal centres; and who, in the most extreme cases, had been wrongfully deported to countries they had not set foot in since childhood.

Caribbean community advocacy organisations in the UK had been documenting these cases and raising the alarm with the Home Office for years, without effective governmental response. What changed in Q1 2018 was the accumulation of individual cases into a pattern that journalists and parliamentarians could no longer ignore. Caribbean community organisations and the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Race and Community were building the political pressure that would, in the next quarter, force the Windrush scandal to the centre of British political life. At this report’s publication date, the full explosion of the scandal — the ministerial resignations, the prime ministerial apologies, the national reckoning — was still imminent rather than accomplished.

8th Biennial: Final Preparations

The 8th Biennial Jamaica Diaspora Conference, scheduled for June 2018 at the Montego Bay Convention Centre, was in its final preparation phase through Q1 2018. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade’s diaspora affairs directorate and the Jamaica Diaspora Institute completed the logistical, thematic, and community engagement preparations that would shape the conference’s programme and attendance profile. Registration was open, and diaspora community organisations across New York, Toronto, London, Miami, and Atlanta were actively mobilising their members to attend what is expected to be the largest and most substantively ambitious gathering in the conference’s sixteen-year history.

The conference’s thematic agenda — centred on economic partnership, diaspora investment, and skills transfer — was shaped in part by the lessons of previous biennials, with a particular focus on developing concrete investment facilitation mechanisms that could close the gap between diaspora aspiration and actual capital deployment in Jamaican economic activity. The Trump era’s political environment had, paradoxically, intensified diaspora interest in maintaining and deepening Jamaican connections: communities facing hostility and insecurity in their countries of residence often turn more intensively toward the cultural and economic anchoring that a strong homeland connection provides.

Jamaica Economy: Steady Progress

Jamaica’s domestic economy maintained its positive trajectory through Q1 2018, with the IMF economic reform programme continuing to deliver its expected outcomes of controlled inflation, declining unemployment, and modest GDP growth. The winter tourism season performed well, maintaining the strong trajectory that would, by year’s end, deliver another record year for stopover visitor arrivals. PICA’s Returning Residents facilitation service continued to process steady inquiry and processing volumes through Q1, and Jamaica’s housing market maintained the sustained diaspora-driven demand that has characterised the post-2016 period.

Outlook for Q2 2018

The second quarter of 2018 will be dominated by two major events: the 8th Biennial Jamaica Diaspora Conference in June, which will bring the global Jamaican community to Montego Bay for its largest gathering in years; and the continuation of the Windrush scandal’s political trajectory in the UK, where the pressure for governmental accountability and compensation was building toward a crisis that this quarter’s early weeks suggest cannot be long delayed. We report next from 2 July 2018.

This Quarterly Jamaica Diaspora and Returnee Update is researched and published by Jamaica Homes News. Sources consulted include the Jamaica Gleaner, Jamaica Observer, Nationwide News Network, RJR News, Caribbean National Weekly, Bank of Jamaica, Planning Institute of Jamaica, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, and PICA. All figures and developments are accurate as of the publication date, 2 April 2018.

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