Quarterly Jamaica Diaspora & Returnee Update — January to March 2020

Published: 2 April 2020 | Jamaica Homes News

Key Takeaways

• COVID-19 pandemic: the world changes in twelve weeks: The first quarter of 2020 began with what appeared to be a regional health emergency in China and ended with a global pandemic that had shuttered economies, closed borders, and killed tens of thousands of people across Europe and North America. The World Health Organisation declared COVID-19 a pandemic on 11 March; by the quarter’s close, lockdowns were in force across the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and virtually every other major diaspora country.
• Jamaica’s first cases and border closure: Jamaica confirmed its first COVID-19 cases in late March 2020, triggering a rapid governmental response led by Prime Minister Andrew Holness and Health Minister Dr Christopher Tufton. Jamaica imposed curfews, closed schools, restricted public gatherings, and suspended tourist arrivals from 24 March, though Jamaican nationals continued to be permitted to return home under health screening protocols. By quarter’s end the island had a handful of confirmed cases with strict containment measures in force.
• 9th Biennial Conference: postponement all but certain: The 9th Biennial Jamaica Diaspora Conference, scheduled for June 2020 in Montego Bay, was facing acute uncertainty by quarter’s end. The government had not yet made a formal postponement announcement, but with international travel suspended and the pandemic’s trajectory deeply uncertain, diaspora community leaders and Ministry officials were privately acknowledging that an in-person June 2020 conference was no longer viable.
• Diaspora economic shock: hospitality and service workers hardest hit: The economic sectors most severely disrupted by pandemic lockdowns in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada were the same sectors where Jamaican diaspora workers are disproportionately concentrated: hospitality, restaurants, retail, domestic care, and personal services. The closure of hotels, restaurants, and entertainment venues from March produced immediate layoffs across these sectors, placing tens of thousands of Jamaican-American, British-Jamaican, and Jamaican-Canadian households under acute financial stress.
• Remittances: pre-pandemic end to a strong 2019: Jamaica’s remittance inflows for Q1 2020 — largely reflecting transactions completed before the pandemic’s economic shock reached full intensity in mid-March — were broadly in line with the strong 2019 trajectory. Full-year 2019 remittances had reached approximately J$394 billion (US$2.9 billion), a record at that time, and January and February 2020 continued that trajectory. March 2020 data, still preliminary at publication, showed the first signs of disruption as lockdown economic shock began to register.
• Windrush Compensation Scheme: UK slow progress amidst pandemic: The UK Home Office’s Windrush Compensation Scheme, which opened in April 2019, was processing claims with frustrating slowness even before the pandemic. By Q1 2020, community advocacy groups were reporting that very few claimants had received compensation payments, with bureaucratic complexity and evidential requirements creating barriers that disproportionately affected older Caribbean community members. The pandemic’s onset raised further concerns about the scheme’s operational continuity.

Introduction: Twelve Weeks That Changed Everything

This report was not the one we expected to be writing. When this quarterly update series began covering Q1 2020 in early January, the early reports of a novel respiratory illness in Wuhan, China, were a distant concern—a health emergency that the global health architecture appeared to be managing with the tools developed after SARS, MERS, and Ebola. By the time this report was written on 2 April 2020, the world had been transformed beyond recognition. The COVID-19 pandemic had become the most significant global health emergency in a century, and its economic and social consequences for Jamaica and its diaspora were still unfolding.

This quarterly report therefore covers a period of whiplash transition: a January and February that proceeded largely on the pre-pandemic trajectory, followed by a March that compressed years of crisis into a single month. The analysis that follows necessarily reflects the deep uncertainty of the moment: many of the critical questions about the pandemic’s duration, severity, and ultimate economic impact remain unanswered at publication date. This update draws on Jamaica Gleaner, Jamaica Observer, Bank of Jamaica, PIOJ, MFAFT, and Caribbean diaspora media through 31 March 2020.

The Pandemic’s Arrival: From China to the World

COVID-19’s spread from China through East Asia, then Italy and the rest of Europe, and finally to North America followed a trajectory that international health experts had modelled but that the political and economic institutions of most developed countries had not adequately prepared for. The World Health Organisation’s declaration of COVID-19 as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern in late January 2020 should have triggered aggressive global preparedness, but the response in the United States and United Kingdom in particular was characterised by critical delays in testing scale-up, personal protective equipment procurement, and public communication.

The declaration of COVID-19 as a pandemic on 11 March 2020 — combined with the WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus’s statement that the characterisation was not merely symbolic but reflected the geographic spread of sustained community transmission — catalysed the accelerated policy responses that followed. Within a week of the pandemic declaration, the United States had declared a national emergency, several US states had begun issuing stay-at-home orders, the United Kingdom had announced its own lockdown, and Canada was implementing border restrictions and quarantine requirements. The velocity of change was extraordinary.

Jamaica: First Cases and Crisis Management

Jamaica confirmed its first COVID-19 cases in the third week of March 2020—imported cases linked to travel history. Prime Minister Andrew Holness convened emergency Cabinet sessions to manage the response, and Health Minister Dr Christopher Tufton became the public face of Jamaica’s COVID communication strategy, holding regular press conferences that aimed to inform the public while maintaining measured confidence in the government’s containment capacity.

Jamaica’s containment measures through the quarter’s end included: mandatory quarantine for all arriving international travellers; the suspension of tourist arrivals from 24 March 2020 (with Jamaican nationals and permanent residents permitted to return under screening protocols); curfews for specified hours; closure of schools from 13 March (which had already been recommended by the Ministry of Education before confirmed cases); closure of entertainment venues, bars, nightclubs, and non-essential retail; and limits on public gatherings. The National Emergency Operations Centre, led by the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management (ODPEM), coordinated the multi-agency response.

The government’s economic response was still being assembled at quarter’s end. Jamaica’s fiscal position had improved significantly under the IMF programme of the preceding years, providing some buffer, but the structural dependence on tourism meant that the economic shock from border closure was immediate and severe. The Bank of Jamaica and the Ministry of Finance were in active discussions with the IMF and multilateral partners about emergency financing to support the fiscal response.

Diaspora Communities Under Pandemic Pressure

The sectors of the US, UK, and Canadian economies in which Jamaican diaspora workers are most heavily represented were among the first and most severely affected by pandemic lockdown measures. Hospitality — hotels, restaurants, bars, catering, and event services — was effectively shut down in most US states by late March, as social distancing requirements made in-person dining unviable and then state emergency orders mandated closure. The domestic care and personal service sectors — home health aides, childminders, cleaning staff, and personal care workers — faced a complex situation in which demand for some services collapsed while others were designated as essential key workers without adequate PPE.

In the United Kingdom, the government’s Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme — announced on 20 March 2020 — provided an 80 per cent wage subsidy for furloughed workers, a measure that significantly mitigated job losses in sectors where employment relationships were formal enough to qualify. British-Jamaican workers in furloughed positions received this protection. However, workers in the gig economy, on zero-hours contracts, or self-employed had more limited and delayed access to support, and many in these categories were Jamaican-origin community members working in precarious employment arrangements.

The pandemic also produced acute health anxieties within diaspora communities, particularly for older Jamaican-origin community members who were disproportionately represented among key workers in the NHS and in social care. The early weeks of the pandemic saw reports emerging of unusually high COVID death rates among Black NHS staff, raising urgent questions about PPE availability, risk assessment practices, and workplace safety that diaspora community advocacy organisations were pressing the government to address.

9th Biennial Conference: June 2020 in Doubt

The 9th Biennial Jamaica Diaspora Conference, which had been in planning for a June 2020 convening in Montego Bay with an expected attendance of several thousand diaspora members from North America, the United Kingdom, and the Caribbean, was facing existential uncertainty by quarter’s end. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade had not yet made a formal postponement announcement at 2 April publication date, but the practical impossibility of an in-person international conference in June 2020 was self-evident given the global travel environment.

Diaspora community leaders in New York, London, Toronto, and Miami were in informal contact with MFAFT officials about the conference’s status, and the consensus view — not yet publicly announced — was that postponement was inevitable. The more complex question was what the substitute engagement programme would look like: whether a virtual diaspora conference format could capture the relational investment and community renewal function of the in-person biennial, and whether postponement to 2021 or a virtual 2020 event was the better strategic choice.

Remittances: Strong to the Pandemic’s Edge

Jamaica’s remittance performance through January and February 2020 continued the strong trajectory established through 2019. Full-year 2019 remittances had reached approximately US$2.9 billion, the highest annual total in Jamaica’s recorded remittance history and a figure that reflected the sustained growth of formal remittance channels, the expansion of digital transfer services, and the relative strength of diaspora employment in the major source countries through most of 2019. January and February 2020 data was broadly consistent with this positive trend.

March 2020 data, still preliminary at publication, showed the first signs of disruption as the economic shock of the pandemic’s lockdown phase began to register. The unprecedented lay-off wave across the US hospitality and service sectors in the second and third weeks of March, combined with the economic anxiety of a rapidly deteriorating employment environment, created the conditions for a remittance decline that economic analysts and BOJ officials were monitoring closely. The critical question at quarter’s end — would the pandemic produce the remittance collapse that crises typically generate, or would some compensating mechanism sustain flows? — would be answered in Q2 data.

Return Migration: Movement Suspended

The flight suspensions and border restrictions of late March 2020 effectively suspended all voluntary return migration from the United Kingdom and other diaspora countries to Jamaica. Those who had been in the active process of planning their return — a decision that typically involves months of preparation covering property arrangements, shipping logistics, school enrolment, and financial structuring — found their timelines abruptly indefinite. PICA’s Returning Residents facilitation services were operating under emergency conditions, with face-to-face services suspended and remote processing begun for the limited number of returnees who were managing the transition under these extraordinary circumstances.

Deportation flights from the United States continued through the quarter, as the Trump administration maintained its aggressive deportation programme despite the pandemic. Deportees arriving in Jamaica were subject to health screening and, from late March, mandatory quarantine, creating additional logistical and resource demands for PICA and the broader returnee support infrastructure.

Outlook for Q2 2020: Deeply Uncertain

The outlook for the quarter ahead is, at this publication date, the most uncertain this series has encountered. The pandemic’s trajectory in the major diaspora countries remains deeply unpredictable: the US case count is still climbing rapidly, the UK lockdown is in its first week, and the duration of restrictions is genuinely unknown. The economic consequences for Jamaica — the loss of an entire tourist season, the remittance trajectory, and the fiscal capacity to manage the crisis — will be determined by decisions and events that are not yet foreseeable. We will report again from this vantage point on 2 July 2020 with the benefit of another quarter’s evidence.

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 2020.