Quarterly Jamaica Diaspora & Returnee Update — July to September 2020

Published: 2 October 2020 | Jamaica Homes News

Key Takeaways

• Remittance paradox: pandemic drives sending higher, not lower: Contrary to the early pandemic predictions of a sharp remittance decline, Jamaica’s Q3 2020 remittance inflows exceeded the equivalent 2019 period, continuing the remarkable pattern established in Q2. The suppression of diaspora travel to Jamaica redirected spending into formal transfers, CARES Act stimulus payments boosted Jamaican-American household liquidity, and diaspora solidarity giving intensified in response to Jamaican families’ pandemic vulnerabilities. Year-to-date 2020 flows were running well ahead of 2019.
• Black Lives Matter: a reckoning with racial justice resonates across the diaspora: The killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police on 25 May 2020 and the subsequent global Black Lives Matter protests of June–August produced one of the most significant moments of racial justice reckoning in a generation. For Jamaica’s diaspora communities across North America and Europe—with their deep experience of structural racism, police violence, and racial inequality in their countries of residence—the movement resonated profoundly, mobilising diaspora participation in protests, community activism, and political advocacy.
• Jamaica economy: severe contraction as tourism collapses: Jamaica’s economy contracted severely through Q3 2020, with the near-total collapse of tourism—which had effectively ceased for much of Q2 and was only beginning a tentative, limited recovery in Q3—producing GDP declines of historic severity. The hotel, restaurant, transport, and entertainment sectors that depend on visitor spending were devastated, and the government’s fiscal position was severely strained by the combination of collapsed revenue and emergency social spending.
• Jamaica’s open-border approach: a distinctive COVID strategy: Jamaica maintained its distinctive pandemic strategy of keeping its borders open for tourists throughout Q3 2020, relying on health protocol enforcement—including mandatory negative PCR testing for arrivals, quarantine requirements, and health and safety certification for hospitality operators—rather than the border closures adopted by many Caribbean neighbours. The strategy sought to preserve some level of tourist activity while managing health risks, and was generating cautious early results as US visitor numbers began a tentative recovery.
• Trump deportations: enforcement continues, diaspora communities on edge: The Trump administration’s immigration enforcement posture continued through Q3 2020, with deportation flights to Jamaica maintained even as the pandemic complicated enforcement logistics. For long-settled Jamaican-American community members with immigration vulnerabilities—including those with old criminal convictions who had been in the US for decades—the ambient anxiety of the Trump enforcement environment remained a defining feature of daily life.
• Windrush Compensation Scheme: slow progress, continued advocacy: The UK’s Windrush Compensation Scheme continued its processing work through Q3 2020, with the pandemic adding further complexity to an already slow and administratively cumbersome process. Community advocacy organisations maintained pressure on the Home Office for faster processing, better outreach, and more generous awards, while the Jamaica High Commission continued its active engagement with affected families.

Introduction: Pandemic, Protest, and Paradox

The third quarter of 2020 was shaped by three defining forces. The COVID-19 pandemic continued its devastating effect on Jamaica’s economy and on the daily lives of diaspora communities across North America and Europe. The global Black Lives Matter movement — triggered by George Floyd’s killing in May and sustained by the accumulated weight of documented racial injustice across Western societies — produced a moment of diaspora political mobilisation unprecedented in recent decades. And the paradox of the pandemic’s effect on remittances — stronger flows despite economic disruption — continued to confound the conventional relationship between economic crisis and remittance decline.

The interactions between these forces were complex. The BLM movement’s focus on anti-Black racism, police violence, and structural inequality resonated deeply with Jamaican diaspora communities whose experience of racism in their countries of residence was both personal and generational. The pandemic’s disproportionate impact on Black communities — visible in the starkly elevated COVID mortality rates among Black Americans and Black British residents — provided a tragic medical confirmation of the structural inequalities that BLM was challenging politically. This quarterly update draws on the Jamaica Gleaner, Jamaica Observer, Bank of Jamaica, PIOJ, MFAFT, PICA, and Caribbean diaspora media.

The Remittance Paradox: Why Sending Rose Despite the Recession

The conventional economic logic of remittance behaviour predicts that a severe recession in diaspora sending countries will reduce remittance inflows to receiving countries. Diaspora workers who lose their jobs or experience income cuts have less to send; those who remain employed face greater uncertainty that makes them more cautious with discretionary spending including remittances. This logic appeared to threaten Jamaica’s remittance corridor from the onset of the pandemic in Q1 2020.

But Q3 2020 data confirmed what Q2 had first suggested: the pandemic was producing the opposite effect. Jamaica’s remittance inflows in Q3 were higher than the equivalent quarter of 2019, continuing a pattern that was emerging across Caribbean and other developing country remittance corridors. The explanation lay in the distinctive features of the COVID recession compared to conventional downturns.

First, the pandemic suppressed diaspora spending in categories that compete with remittances for household budget. Diaspora members who typically spent several thousand dollars per year on flights and accommodation for annual Jamaica visits could not travel; that spending redirected into formal remittances. Diaspora members who typically sent gifts and cash in person during Christmas visits switched to wire transfers. The substitution of remote financial support for in-person presence mechanically boosted recorded remittance figures.

Second, the US government’s unprecedented pandemic fiscal response — the CARES Act’s $1,200 direct payments, $600 weekly unemployment supplements, and expanded Paycheck Protection Programme — maintained household income at levels that would not have survived in a conventional recession. Jamaican-American workers who became unemployed during the pandemic received unemployment benefits that, with the $600 supplement, replaced 100 per cent or more of their pre-pandemic wages in many cases. This maintenance of household income preserved the financial capacity for remittance sending even for those who lost their jobs.

Third, the pandemic’s humanitarian impact on Jamaican families — with COVID-related income losses, healthcare costs, and food insecurity — intensified the diaspora’s solidarity giving. Diaspora members who were themselves managing the stress and uncertainty of the pandemic nonetheless increased their transfers to Jamaican family members who were in worse financial circumstances. The altruistic dimension of transnational family remittances was heightened rather than suppressed by the crisis.

Black Lives Matter: The Diaspora’s Racial Justice Moment

The killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer on 25 May 2020, documented on video and shared globally, catalysed the largest racial justice protest movement in the United States since the Civil Rights era. The Black Lives Matter protests that followed — extending through June, July, and August 2020 across hundreds of US cities and spreading internationally to the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and beyond — represented a moment of collective racial reckoning that resonated profoundly with Jamaica’s diaspora communities.

For Jamaican-American communities — many of whose members had personal experience of police violence, racial profiling, and institutional racism in the United States — the BLM movement was both an expression of long-standing grievance and a moment of political mobilisation. Diaspora community organisations, churches, and cultural institutions participated in protests, organised community meetings, and used their platforms to connect the BLM movement’s specific US context to the broader global history of anti-Black racism of which Jamaica’s own colonial and post-colonial experience was a part.

In the United Kingdom, the BLM movement’s resonance for the British-Jamaican community was sharpened by the recent history of the Windrush scandal — a contemporary example of state-sanctioned discrimination against Black British Caribbean community members — and by the documented racial disparities in COVID-19 mortality, which showed Black Britons dying at significantly higher rates than white Britons. British-Jamaican participation in the UK’s BLM protests was substantial, and the movement provided a frame for connecting the specific experiences of Black British Caribbean communities to the global conversation about structural racism that the Floyd killing had opened.

In Jamaica, the BLM movement generated significant public commentary and solidarity. Prime Minister Andrew Holness expressed solidarity with the movement’s core demands while situating Jamaica’s own history of colonial oppression and the continuing relevance of racial justice to the Caribbean context. Diaspora organisations in the United States made specific connections between the BLM agenda and the treatment of Black Caribbean communities in US immigration enforcement, calling for the dismantling of the enforcement infrastructure that they characterised as racially discriminatory in its impact on Black immigrant communities.

Jamaica Economy: Historic Contraction

Jamaica’s economic performance through Q3 2020 remained severely depressed by the collapse of tourism. The island’s tourism sector — which contributes approximately 30 per cent of GDP directly and supports a much larger share of economic activity through supply chain and multiplier effects — had effectively ceased through Q2 and was only beginning a tentative, limited recovery in Q3 as Jamaica’s open-border approach with health protocols attracted the first returning visitors. Stopover visitor arrivals in July–September 2020 were a small fraction of the equivalent 2019 period, reflecting the combination of US travel restrictions, airline capacity reductions, and consumer health anxiety.

PIOJ’s Q2 2020 GDP data, released during Q3, confirmed a contraction of historic severity — significantly worse than any quarterly decline in the post-independence period. The Q3 2020 figure, not yet available at the time of this report but anticipated by PIOJ’s forward guidance, was expected to show some improvement from Q2’s nadir but remain deeply negative. The government’s fiscal response — including the CARE programme of targeted social support, the Job SAVE employment retention scheme, and a significant drawdown of IMF and multilateral support — was providing some floor under the contraction, but the structural dependence on tourism left Jamaica’s recovery timeline hostage to the global pandemic’s resolution.

Jamaica’s Open-Border COVID Strategy

Jamaica maintained its distinctive pandemic strategy of keeping its air borders open to tourists throughout Q3 2020, a decision that distinguished it from many Caribbean island neighbours that had adopted stricter closures. The strategy required all incoming visitors to present a negative PCR COVID-19 test result taken within 72 hours of travel, comply with health screening on arrival, and adhere to movement restrictions within Resilient Corridor zones in Montego Bay, Negril, and other tourism hubs. Hotels and resorts operating within the Resilient Corridors were required to achieve health and safety certification from the Jamaica Tourist Board and Ministry of Health.

The strategy’s logic was that Jamaica’s extreme tourism dependence made a total border closure economically catastrophic beyond what a managed open-border approach with health protocols would entail. The risk calculation was that managed visitor arrivals—confined to certified facilities, tested before departure, and screened on arrival—could be maintained at a level of health risk that Jamaica’s health system could manage, while generating at least some tourism revenue that a complete closure would eliminate. By Q3, early data suggested the strategy was achieving some of its objectives: a modest number of US visitors were arriving, hotel occupancy in the Resilient Corridors was building, and no major outbreak traceable to incoming tourism had occurred.

Trump Deportations: Enforcement Continues

The Trump administration’s immigration enforcement operations continued through Q3 2020, with deportation flights to Jamaica maintained despite the logistical complications of the pandemic. ICE operations in the interior of the United States had been disrupted in the early weeks of the pandemic — as detention centre outbreaks raised health risks and court operations were curtailed — but enforcement had resumed by Q3 at levels approaching pre-pandemic norms. PICA’s deportee reception protocols adapted to include COVID health screening, quarantine arrangements, and modified RISE Life Management Services reintegration support under pandemic-safe conditions.

For Jamaican-American communities, the continued Trump enforcement posture through the pandemic’s upheaval added immigration anxiety to the health and economic pressures of the COVID period. Community advocacy organisations continued their case-by-case interventions and their broader legislative advocacy for immigration reform, while directing diaspora members to available legal resources for those facing enforcement actions. The November 2020 US presidential election — and the prospect of a Biden victory — was becoming the primary political focus for diaspora immigration advocates as Q3 closed.

Returnees: Pandemic Creates Reluctant Returnees

The pandemic created a distinctive category of “reluctant returnees”: UK and North American Jamaican community members who had been visiting Jamaica when COVID restrictions came into force and found themselves unable to return to their countries of residence as flight cancellations and border closures proliferated. Some of these individuals chose to remain in Jamaica through Q2 and Q3, effectively becoming temporary returnees. A subset used the extended Jamaica stay to begin exploring longer-term return options, and some entered the formal Returning Residents application process during their extended stay. PICA’s Returning Residents processing accommodated these cases within its standard framework.

Outlook for Q4 2020

The fourth quarter of 2020 will bring the US presidential election on 3 November, whose outcome will determine whether the immigration enforcement anxiety that has characterised the Trump years will be sustained or transformed. Jamaica’s tourism recovery through Q4 will be critical to the island’s economic stabilisation, with the Christmas-season visitor window typically the year’s strongest. Remittances through the Christmas quarter are expected to be the year’s highest, with the pandemic solidarity dynamics fully operative through the festive season. The global COVID picture — with northern hemisphere winter threatening a new surge — will be watched closely for its implications for Jamaica’s open-border strategy and the diaspora countries’ economic environment.

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 October 2020.