Published: 2 January 2020 | Jamaica Homes News
Key Takeaways
- Record remittances: 2019 full-year total approaches US$2.9 billion: Jamaica’s remittance inflows for 2019 are on track to reach approximately US$2.9 billion — the highest annual total in the country’s recorded remittance history. The Q4 Christmas peak, which traditionally accounts for the year’s strongest quarterly remittance flow, has confirmed this record trajectory. The growth reflects continued expansion of formal transfer channels, digital remittance platform adoption, and the sustained strength of Jamaican-origin employment in the major diaspora source countries through 2019.
- Tourism: Jamaica’s best year ever for stopover arrivals: Jamaica’s tourism sector has posted a record year in 2019, with stopover visitor arrivals projected to exceed 2.6 million — a new high. The sector’s performance, driven by strong North American source market growth, new air route additions, and the continued maturation of Jamaica’s hotel and experience product, represents a major economic success story that is already generating optimism for 2020 and beyond. The strong tourism performance is creating employment and investment opportunities that are relevant to the returnee community.
- Brexit deadline: January 2020 and British-Jamaican settlement rights: The United Kingdom’s Brexit saga — which has produced three missed deadlines, two general elections, and a political crisis of extraordinary duration — is now heading toward a January 31, 2020 departure deadline following Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s December general election victory. For British-Jamaican community members with mixed EU and non-EU family connections, or who had been planning European cross-border moves, Brexit’s resolution creates a new set of legal and logistical considerations.
- 9th Biennial Conference 2020: planning accelerates: Planning for the 9th Biennial Jamaica Diaspora Conference, scheduled for June 2020 in Jamaica, gathered pace through Q4 2019 as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade and the Jamaica Diaspora Institute coordinated the logistics, thematic agenda, and diaspora community organisation outreach that will drive attendance and engagement. The conference’s themes are expected to centre on economic development and investment, with the diaspora’s role as a source of FDI, professional skills transfer, and remittance capital central to the programme.
- Windrush: compensation scheme open but payments slow: The Windrush Compensation Scheme, which opened in April 2019, continued its slow processing through Q4 2019, with reports from community advocacy organisations indicating that very few claimants had yet received compensation payments. The Home Office’s administration of the scheme — particularly its evidential requirements and its expectation that claimants self-navigate a complex bureaucratic process — was drawing sustained criticism from Caribbean community advocates and from the Parliamentary Home Affairs Select Committee.
- Trump immigration: deportations and DACA uncertainty continue: The Trump administration’s immigration enforcement programme continued through Q4 2019, with ICE deportations of Jamaican nationals maintained at elevated levels, DACA’s fate still pending before the Supreme Court, and the Diversity Visa Lottery programme under continuing presidential criticism. Jamaican-American community organisations maintained their legal defence and community education programmes in response to the sustained enforcement environment.
Introduction: A Year of Records
The fourth quarter of 2019 closes a year of considerable achievement for Jamaica and its diaspora. Tourism has delivered the strongest performance in the sector’s history. Remittances have reached a new record. Jamaica’s economic reform programme — which has maintained IMF programme compliance while delivering consistent GDP growth and historically low unemployment — has moved the island onto a stronger structural footing than it has occupied in decades. And diaspora engagement — through the continued momentum of the 8th Biennial Conference’s commitments and the approaching 9th Biennial in June 2020 — has maintained a level of organisational intensity that augurs well for the year ahead.
The year’s positive story has real shadows: the persistent challenges of crime and violence that affect Jamaica’s domestic security environment; the Brexit uncertainty affecting British-Jamaican communities with mixed EU family connections; the sustained pressure of Trump-era immigration enforcement on Jamaican-American households; and the deeper structural questions about economic diversification and climate resilience that will determine Jamaica’s long-term trajectory. This update draws on Jamaica Gleaner, Jamaica Observer, Bank of Jamaica, PIOJ, MFAFT, and Caribbean diaspora media through 31 December 2019.
Remittances: Record 2019 Performance
Jamaica’s full-year 2019 remittance performance is tracking to approximately US$2.9 billion — a record for the country and a figure that represents approximately 16 per cent of GDP. The Q4 Christmas peak, which traditionally generates the year’s highest quarterly remittance volume as diaspora members send accelerated support for school expenses, household improvements, and Christmas celebration costs, has confirmed this trajectory. Bank of Jamaica data through November showed full-year remittances ahead of 2018’s prior record, with December’s traditionally strong flows expected to extend the lead.
The 2019 record reflects several structural drivers. The expansion of formal remittance channels — particularly digital platforms including Western Union’s app-based services, MoneyGram’s digital products, and Caribbean-focused fintech entrants — has reduced transfer costs, increased convenience, and drawn previously informal transfers into the formal measurement system. The sustained health of US employment through 2019 — with unemployment rates at multi-decade lows and wage growth strong in the lower-skilled service sectors where many Jamaican-American workers are concentrated — supported both the volume and the consistency of remittance flows. And the continued growth of the Jamaican diaspora population in the major source countries through established immigration pathways maintained the base of active remittance senders.
Tourism: Jamaica’s Best Year on Record
Jamaica’s tourism sector closed 2019 with what appears to be a record year for stopover visitor arrivals, projecting above 2.6 million for the full year — a new high water mark for the sector and a significant achievement for an industry that contributes directly and indirectly to approximately a third of Jamaica’s GDP. The performance has been driven by strong growth from the United States, which remains Jamaica’s dominant source market, as well as solid gains from Canada and targeted growth in European markets through Air Canada and British Airways capacity additions.
The tourism record has direct implications for the returnee community, as the sector’s growth is generating demand for professional and managerial talent — in hotel operations, tourism product development, culinary arts, and hospitality management — that returned Jamaicans with international experience are well positioned to supply. Several returning residents with UK and North American hospitality and business backgrounds have established tourism-adjacent businesses through 2019, and PICA’s Returning Residents programming has begun to build more structured pathways connecting incoming returnee professionals with tourism sector employers and investment opportunities.
Brexit: Boris Johnson’s Victory and the January 2020 Deadline
Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party won an 80-seat majority at the December 12, 2019 UK general election — the largest Conservative majority since Margaret Thatcher’s 1987 landslide — transforming the parliamentary arithmetic around Brexit and making the January 31, 2020 departure from the European Union all but certain. For British-Jamaican communities, Johnson’s victory resolved one form of uncertainty — Brexit will happen — while opening new questions about what the post-Brexit immigration framework will mean for non-EU Commonwealth citizens whose status in the UK is governed by separate legal arrangements.
British-Jamaican community members with the right of abode or settled status in the UK are not directly affected by Brexit’s EU withdrawal element. However, British-Jamaican households with mixed EU and non-EU citizenship compositions — particularly those with Eastern European spouses or children who had relied on free movement rights — faced practical adjustments as the transition period’s terms became clearer. The broader immigration policy question — whether the post-Brexit points-based immigration system would treat Commonwealth citizens more favourably than EU citizens, as some Brexiteers had promised — was still unresolved at year’s end.
9th Biennial Conference: Building Toward June 2020
Planning for the 9th Biennial Jamaica Diaspora Conference accelerated through Q4 2019, with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade and the Jamaica Diaspora Institute deepening their outreach to diaspora community organisations across North America, the United Kingdom, and the Caribbean. The conference, expected to draw several thousand participants to Jamaica in June 2020, is being positioned around themes of economic partnership and investment: how the diaspora’s accumulated capital, professional expertise, and transnational networks can be channelled into productive investments in Jamaica’s economy.
The eight biennial conferences since 2002 have built a cumulative engagement architecture — diaspora advisory boards, task forces, sectoral working groups, and formal commitments — that the 9th Biennial is expected to build upon and deepen. Particular attention is being paid to the diaspora’s role in the housing and real estate sector — an area where Jamaica Homes is actively engaged in connecting diaspora members with investment and homeownership opportunities — as well as in agriculture, technology, and renewable energy.
Windrush: Justice Deferred
The Windrush Compensation Scheme’s processing through 2019 has been characterised by agonising slowness. The scheme, which opened in April 2019 following the Home Office’s formal apology for the Windrush scandal and Sajid Javid’s commitment to full compensation for affected Windrush generation members and their families, had paid out to very few claimants by year’s end. Community advocacy groups including the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, the Migrants Rights Network, and Caribbean community organisations were reporting that the Home Office’s administration of the scheme was creating systematic barriers: complex evidential requirements, limited caseworker support, and processing timelines running to many months.
The human cost of this slow processing was acute for the oldest Windrush generation members — those in their 70s and 80s who had experienced the most severe injustices of the scandal, including wrongful deportation, detention, denial of medical treatment, and loss of employment — for whom justice deferred was particularly painful. Caribbean community organisations in the UK were pressing the Home Office to simplify the claims process, provide independent caseworker support to claimants, and commit to processing timelines that matched the urgency of the situation.
Trump Immigration: Year Three of Enforcement
The Trump administration entered its third year of intensified immigration enforcement through 2019 with no moderation of its operational pace. ICE deportation flights to Jamaica have continued to arrive at regular intervals through the year, maintaining the elevated deportation volumes established under the administration’s 2017 priorities directive. The Supreme Court’s grant of certiorari to hear the DACA cases in November 2019 — with arguments scheduled for the first quarter of 2020 — kept the legal status of approximately 700,000 Dreamers in uncertainty heading into the new year.
Jamaican-American community organisations maintained their legal defence networks through 2019, providing Know Your Rights training, emergency representation for community members facing removal proceedings, and community education about the specific protections available to long-term residents with US-citizen family members. The network of Jamaican consulates and Honorary Consuls across the US maintained their deportee support documentation services, and PICA continued to adapt its deportee reception and reintegration programming to the volume and composition of returning deportees.
Jamaica Economy: Growth Continues
Jamaica’s domestic economy through 2019 continued the modest but consistent growth trajectory established under the IMF economic reform programme, with preliminary PIOJ data suggesting annual GDP growth in the 1-2 per cent range — modest by regional comparisons but representing the continuation of the longest sustained growth period Jamaica has experienced since independence. Unemployment continued to decline through 2019, reaching historic lows as tourism and services sector expansion absorbed workers from the labour market. Consumer price inflation remained contained, and the Jamaica dollar maintained relative stability against the US dollar through most of the year.
The economy’s structural vulnerability to external shocks — the dependence on tourism revenues, the exposure to weather events, and the high debt-to-GDP ratio that limits fiscal flexibility — remained areas of concern for economic analysts, but the direction of travel through 2019 was consistently positive. Prime Minister Holness’s government, which secured its parliamentary mandate through the 2016 election and was positioning for a 2020 general election, entered the new year with economic indicators pointing in a broadly favourable direction.
Outlook for Q1 2020
The first quarter of 2020 opens with Jamaica’s economic momentum intact, its tourism sector at record levels, and its diaspora engagement architecture building toward the June 2020 Biennial. The primary risks are external: the US-China trade war’s potential to slow global growth, the post-Brexit transition’s implications for UK economic confidence, and the always-present hurricane season threat that will resume in June. A new health concern — a novel coronavirus identified in China in December 2019 — is being monitored by health authorities but is not, as of this publication date, considered a significant threat to Jamaica or to the diaspora source countries. We look forward to reporting from 2 April 2020 on Q1’s developments.
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 January 2020.
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