Quarterly Jamaica Diaspora & Returnee Update — April to June 2019

Published: 2 July 2019 | Jamaica Homes News

Key Takeaways

• BREAKING: Reggae Boyz in Gold Cup semi-final — USA match tomorrow: As this report goes to publication, the Jamaican national football team has just made history by reaching the CONCACAF Gold Cup semi-finals for the first time ever, defeating Panama 2-0 on 30 June 2019. The Boyz face the United States tomorrow, 3 July, at Nissan Stadium in Nashville in what will be the most significant match in Jamaican football history. The diaspora across North America and globally is electrified. The Gold Cup group stage saw Jamaica defeat Honduras 3-2, beat Canada 1-0, and draw with Curacao, advancing to the knockout rounds before dispatching Panama in a dominant quarter-final performance.
• Gold Cup galvanises diaspora community identity: The Reggae Boyz’ run through the CONCACAF Gold Cup has generated a level of collective diaspora engagement not seen since Jamaica’s 1998 World Cup qualification. Watch parties across New York, South Florida, Toronto, London, and Atlanta have drawn thousands of diaspora community members, reinforcing a shared Jamaican identity that connects diaspora members across generations, geographic distances, and the everyday social fragmentation of transnational life.
• Trump immigration: continued enforcement and rhetoric: The Trump administration’s immigration enforcement programme continued through Q2 2019, with ICE deportations of Jamaican nationals maintained at elevated levels. Trump’s sustained anti-immigration political rhetoric, including proposed cuts to legal immigration and repeated attacks on the Diversity Visa programme, continued to generate anxiety across Jamaican-American communities. Jamaican-American advocacy organisations maintained their legal education and community protection programmes through the quarter.
• Tourism: Jamaica’s strong first half continues: Jamaica’s tourism sector maintained its strong first-half performance through Q2 2019, with stopover visitor arrivals tracking well ahead of the equivalent 2018 period. The spring and early summer season — traditionally the shoulder period for the resort destinations — delivered solid results, underpinned by North American source market strength and the continued maturation of Jamaica’s tourism product. The sector is on course for a full-year record in 2019.
• Remittances: growth trajectory intact: BOJ data for Q1 and early Q2 2019 confirmed continued year-on-year growth in Jamaica’s remittance inflows, maintaining the positive trajectory that had seen the country approach a new annual record in 2018. The US source market, supported by sustained low unemployment and wage growth in the service sectors where Jamaican-American workers are concentrated, continued to be the dominant driver of Jamaica’s remittance performance.
• 8th Biennial: one year of follow-through: June 2019 marks one year since the 8th Biennial Jamaica Diaspora Conference of June 2018, providing a natural milestone for reviewing the implementation of that conference’s commitments. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade and the Jamaica Diaspora Institute have maintained the working group and advisory committee structures established under the 8th Biennial, and progress is being assessed against the commitments made in the conference’s sectoral working groups ahead of the 9th Biennial planning process.

Introduction: Football History and Diaspora Pride

There is a particular electricity running through the global Jamaican diaspora as this quarterly report is published on 2 July 2019. The Reggae Boyz defeated Panama 2-0 in the CONCACAF Gold Cup quarter-finals just two days ago, making Jamaica a semi-finalist in the region’s premier national football competition for the first time in the tournament’s history. Tomorrow they face the United States. Whether or not the Boyz emerge from Nissan Stadium in Nashville with a place in the final, something has already changed: Jamaican football has arrived at a new level, and the diaspora communities who have followed every match with the intensity of collective belonging know it. This report covers the quarter’s broader diaspora developments alongside the Gold Cup story that has defined the season’s emotional register. Sources include Jamaica Gleaner, Jamaica Observer, Bank of Jamaica, PIOJ, MFAFT, and Caribbean diaspora media through 30 June 2019.

The Reggae Boyz at the Gold Cup: History Made

Jamaica’s 2019 CONCACAF Gold Cup campaign began in June with the group stage, which the Boyz navigated with a combination of attacking intent and physical resilience that reflected the growing quality of the squad assembled by coach Theodore Whitmore. A 3-2 victory over Honduras, a 1-0 win against Canada, and a draw with Curaçao saw Jamaica advance from their group with enough momentum to carry into the knockout stage. The group-stage performances generated significant diaspora media coverage, with Jamaican-American sports commentators and community organisations using the platform to celebrate the team and connect the football moment to the broader story of Jamaican-American cultural pride.

The quarter-final on 30 June — Jamaica versus Panama, the same opponents who had knocked the Boyz out in the 2017 Gold Cup quarter-finals — delivered an emphatic 2-0 victory that erased that earlier disappointment and produced scenes of diaspora celebration across North America, the UK, and Jamaica itself. The result was more than a football score: it was the confirmation that Jamaican football had crossed a threshold. For the first time in the tournament’s history, Jamaica has reached the Gold Cup semi-finals.

Tomorrow, 3 July 2019, Jamaica faces the United States in Nashville. The Jamaican diaspora will be watching in numbers and with an intensity that transforms the match into something larger than football — a statement about Jamaican excellence, diaspora pride, and the country’s capacity to compete at the highest regional level. Whatever the result, this team has already made history. If they win, they’ll be in a Gold Cup final. We’ll report the outcome in the Q3 edition.

Gold Cup and Diaspora Community Identity

The cultural significance of the Reggae Boyz’ Gold Cup run extends well beyond the results table. For diaspora communities whose connection to Jamaica is mediated by distance, time, and the demands of lives built in other countries, collective sporting events provide one of the most powerful mechanisms for the renewal of shared identity. The Gold Cup watch parties that have drawn thousands of Jamaican-American community members to restaurants, bars, and community centres across New York, South Florida, Atlanta, and Toronto are not merely sporting events: they are moments of diaspora community formation, in which people whose daily lives intersect only occasionally gather around a shared story and confirm their collective belonging to something larger than their individual lives in their countries of residence.

This community formation function of sporting achievement is particularly important for second-generation Jamaican-Americans, whose connection to Jamaica is more cultural and identity-based than the direct family ties and lived memory that animate their parents’ diaspora experience. The Reggae Boyz, performing at the highest regional level, give second-generation diaspora members a contemporary and living embodiment of Jamaican excellence — a complement to the cultural inheritance of reggae, Rastafari, and the deep intellectual and artistic traditions of the Jamaican diaspora’s older generations.

Trump Immigration: Sustained Enforcement and Rhetoric

The Trump administration’s immigration programme continued through Q2 2019 on the trajectory of escalating enforcement and restrictive policy that has characterised the administration’s approach since its first days. ICE deportation flights to Jamaica maintained their elevated frequency through the quarter, with deportees arriving at Norman Manley International Airport under PICA supervision. The volume of deportees and the complexity of their reintegration needs — many deportees have spent the majority of their adult lives in the United States and have limited or no meaningful connection to Jamaica — continued to place demands on PICA’s reception infrastructure and RISE Life Management Services’ reintegration programming.

Beyond direct enforcement, Trump’s sustained anti-immigration political rhetoric — expressed through his Twitter communications, campaign rallies, and formal policy proposals — continued to shape the political landscape in which Jamaican-American communities navigated their civic and social lives. Proposals to cut legal immigration volumes, eliminate the Diversity Visa Lottery programme, and restrict family reunification pathways threatened categories of immigration that are disproportionately used by Caribbean community members, generating advocacy responses from Jamaican-American organisations alongside those of the broader Caribbean diaspora coalition.

Tourism: Jamaica’s Strong First Half

Jamaica’s tourism sector delivered another strong quarter through April–June 2019, maintaining the momentum of a first half of the year that has exceeded the equivalent 2018 period across most key performance metrics. The Jamaica Tourist Board’s data through Q2 showed stopover visitor arrivals ahead of last year, with the United States — Jamaica’s dominant source market — delivering the strongest growth. Canadian and UK source markets also showed solid performance, supported by direct air service capacity from Air Canada and British Airways.

The tourism sector’s sustained outperformance has significant downstream effects for the returnee community. The sector’s growth generates employment across the skill spectrum — from entry-level hospitality positions to management, culinary, and marketing roles — that create landing opportunities for returning residents. The growing sophistication of Jamaica’s tourism product, including the expansion of community-based tourism, culinary tourism, and heritage tourism beyond the traditional resort experience, is creating niches that returning residents with international professional backgrounds are particularly well positioned to develop and serve.

Remittances: On Track for Another Strong Year

Jamaica’s remittance inflows maintained their positive trajectory through the first half of 2019, with BOJ data for Q1 and preliminary Q2 figures confirming year-on-year growth across major source countries. The sustained health of US employment — with national unemployment remaining near historic lows and wage growth maintaining positive momentum in the service sectors — continued to support Jamaican-American remittance-sending capacity. The United States, which contributes approximately 65 per cent of Jamaica’s total remittance receipts, remained the dominant driver of aggregate performance.

The growth of digital remittance channels continued to be a structural feature of the remittance landscape in 2019. The declining cost of cross-border digital transfers — driven by competition among established operators like Western Union and MoneyGram and new fintech entrants targeting the Caribbean corridor — has made formal remittance channels more accessible and more attractive relative to informal alternatives, drawing previously unmeasured flows into the formal system and boosting recorded aggregate totals. The 2019 full-year remittance total appears on track to approach or surpass the prior record.

8th Biennial: One Year On

June 2019 marks the first anniversary of the 8th Biennial Jamaica Diaspora Conference, held in Montego Bay in June 2018. The conference’s commitments — across economic engagement, diaspora investment facilitation, skills transfer, and community development — provided the strategic framework for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade’s diaspora engagement programming through the subsequent twelve months. The one-year review conducted through the MFAFT’s diaspora advisory committee structure has assessed progress against each of the sectoral working groups’ commitments, identifying areas of achievement and areas requiring accelerated action.

The natural continuity from 8th to 9th Biennial — the institutional memory carried forward through the advisory committee structures, the personal relationships built between diaspora leaders and government officials, and the strategic frameworks that accumulate across biennial cycles — is one of the Jamaica Diaspora Conference’s most valuable structural features. Planning for the 9th Biennial, scheduled for June 2020, is already well underway, with the MFAFT and Jamaica Diaspora Institute having begun the thematic and logistical development work that will shape the conference’s agenda and community engagement programme.

Outlook for Q3 2019: Football First

The immediate outlook for Q3 2019 begins with tomorrow’s Gold Cup semi-final. Whatever the result against the USA, Jamaica’s diaspora will enter the third quarter with a renewed sense of collective pride and national confidence that the Reggae Boyz’ historic run has delivered. Beyond football, Q3 will bring the peak summer diaspora visit season, the September back-to-school remittance surge, and continued monitoring of the Trump immigration environment as the administration’s 2020 re-election campaign begins to take shape. We report next from 2 October 2019 — and by then we will know how Nashville went.

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 July 2019.

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