Quarterly Jamaica Diaspora & Returnee Update — January to March 2021

Published: 2 April 2021 | Jamaica Homes News

Key Takeaways

• Biden inauguration: a new era for US-Jamaica immigration relations: Joe Biden’s inauguration as the 46th President of the United States on 20 January 2021 marked a profound shift in the immigration policy environment for Jamaican-American communities. Within his first days in office, Biden signed executive orders pausing deportations for 100 days, reversing several Trump-era immigration restrictions, and committing to comprehensive immigration reform—changes that were immediately felt as a reduction in the enforcement anxiety that had characterised the preceding four years for many settled Jamaican-American community members.
• American Rescue Plan: $1.9 trillion stimulus boosts diaspora liquidity: The American Rescue Plan Act, signed by President Biden on 11 March 2021, injected $1.9 trillion into the US economy and included $1,400 direct payments to eligible Americans—payments that directly boosted the household liquidity of Jamaican-American workers and contributed to the continued elevated remittance-sending capacity that had characterised Jamaica’s pandemic-era inflows since 2020.
• COVID vaccines: diaspora countries begin population rollout: The United States, United Kingdom, and Canada began their mass COVID-19 vaccination campaigns through Q1 2021, with the UK leading the developed world in per-capita vaccination pace. For Jamaican diaspora communities—with their high concentrations in healthcare, social care, and transportation—vaccine access came early under priority group frameworks, reducing health anxiety and beginning to shift the calculus around eventual return travel to Jamaica.
• Remittances: extraordinary pandemic pace continues: Jamaica’s remittance inflows through Q1 2021 maintained the exceptional pace established through 2020, with BOJ data confirming continued strong flows from the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada. The structural factors driving elevated remittances—suppressed diaspora travel redirecting spending into formal transfers, sustained diaspora solidarity with Jamaican families, and strong diaspora employment—remained fully operative.
• Virtual Diaspora Symposium announced for June 2021: The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade announced that the Jamaica Diaspora Symposium—a virtual substitute for the delayed in-person 9th Biennial Jamaica Diaspora Conference—would be held on 18–19 June 2021. The announcement was welcomed by diaspora community organisations as a structured engagement opportunity, while community leaders continued to advocate for the eventual restoration of the in-person biennial conference.
• Jamaica economy: early recovery signs as COVID second wave fades: Jamaica’s economy showed early signs of recovery through Q1 2021 following the severe 2020 COVID-19 contraction, with tourism beginning a tentative return as the government maintained its open-border approach with health protocols, and the construction and services sectors demonstrating resilience. PIOJ projected positive GDP growth for 2021 as the base-effect tailwind of the 2020 contraction would support strong headline figures through the year.

Introduction: A New Political Chapter

The first quarter of 2021 opened with one of the most consequential political transitions in the United States in recent decades. Joe Biden’s inauguration on 20 January — following the turbulent final weeks of the Trump administration, including the 6 January attack on the US Capitol — produced an immediate and tangible shift in the immigration policy environment for Jamaican-American and broader Caribbean diaspora communities. The change was not merely symbolic: within hours of taking office, the new administration was signing executive orders that directly affected the enforcement landscape that had shaped the diaspora’s daily anxieties for four years.

Against this political backdrop, Jamaica’s remittance picture remained extraordinarily positive. The pandemic’s paradoxical effect on remittance flows—suppressing diaspora travel while redirecting spending into formal transfers—continued to generate inflows well above pre-pandemic levels, and the American Rescue Plan’s stimulus payments provided an additional boost to Jamaican-American household liquidity that was visible in March’s remittance data. This quarterly update draws on the Jamaica Gleaner, Jamaica Observer, Bank of Jamaica, PIOJ, MFAFT, PICA, and Caribbean diaspora media sources.

Biden Inauguration: The Immigration Landscape Transformed

Joseph Biden’s inauguration as the 46th President of the United States on 20 January 2021 produced immediate and substantive changes to the immigration enforcement environment for Jamaican-American communities. Within his first day in office, Biden signed an executive order directing a 100-day pause on deportations, pending a review of immigration enforcement priorities. He also signed orders reversing the Trump administration’s travel bans on several predominantly Muslim countries, halting construction of the southern border wall, and beginning the process of unwinding the Migrant Protection Protocols (“Remain in Mexico”) programme.

For Jamaican-American communities—particularly those with undocumented members or family members under orders of removal—the shift in tone and policy was profound. The Trump years had been characterised by an enforcement posture that generated ambient anxiety even for long-settled legal residents who had interactions with the justice system in their past, as the administration’s broad definitions of enforcement priority had swept in community members with old or minor convictions. The Biden administration’s stated narrowing of enforcement priorities to serious criminal threats and recent border crossers directly reduced the pool of long-settled Jamaican-Americans at acute deportation risk.

The 100-day deportation pause was challenged in court by the state of Texas and partially enjoined by a federal judge within days of its issuance, limiting its practical effect. But the administration’s broader enforcement priority recalibration remained operative, and PICA’s deportee reception volumes through Q1 2021 reflected a deportation environment that was significantly less intensive than the Trump period’s peak. Community advocacy organisations in the Jamaican-American diaspora welcomed the early signals from the Biden administration while maintaining pressure for comprehensive immigration reform legislation—which the administration had submitted to Congress in its first week, though passage faced significant political obstacles.

American Rescue Plan: Stimulus and Remittances

The American Rescue Plan Act, signed into law by President Biden on 11 March 2021, was the largest single piece of pandemic relief legislation in US history, injecting approximately $1.9 trillion into the American economy. Its provisions included $1,400 direct payments to eligible Americans (phasing out above certain income thresholds), extended unemployment insurance supplements, expanded child tax credits, and substantial funding for vaccine distribution, school reopening, and state and local government relief.

For Jamaica’s remittance inflows, the Rescue Plan’s direct payment component was immediately significant. Bank of Jamaica analysts observed a spike in US-origin remittances in the weeks following the stimulus payments’ distribution in mid-to-late March 2021, consistent with the pattern observed after the first two rounds of pandemic stimulus in 2020. Jamaican-American households that received the $1,400 payments channelled a portion into remittances to family members in Jamaica, reflecting both the cultural imperative of transnational family financial solidarity and the practical reality that Jamaican relatives were in many cases more financially precarious than their diaspora relatives.

The Rescue Plan’s extended unemployment insurance supplement—adding $300 per week to state unemployment benefits—also supported the remittance-sending capacity of Jamaican-American workers who had been displaced from employment during the pandemic, preventing a sharp drop in inflows from the segment of the diaspora community most economically exposed to COVID’s labour market disruptions. The combined effect was to sustain Jamaica’s remittance inflows at historically elevated levels through Q1 2021, continuing the trend that had characterised the pandemic period since Q2 2020.

COVID Vaccines: Priority Access for Diaspora Key Workers

The COVID-19 vaccination campaigns in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada were well underway through Q1 2021, with each country’s priority group framework identifying healthcare workers, social care staff, and older adults as early vaccine recipients. For the Jamaican diaspora—with its high concentrations in NHS nursing and care work in the UK, healthcare administration and clinical work in the US and Canada, and the transportation and domestic services sectors—vaccine access came relatively early in the priority queue.

The United Kingdom’s vaccination campaign was the most advanced among the major diaspora countries through Q1, with the UK having administered at least one dose to over 45 per cent of its adult population by the end of March 2021—a pace that led the developed world. For British-Jamaican NHS and care workers who had been on the pandemic’s front line since March 2020, vaccine access in the Q4 2020–Q1 2021 period was both a personal health relief and a community landmark. The Jamaican diaspora’s significant overrepresentation in the UK’s health and social care workforce meant that a substantial proportion of the British-Jamaican working population was vaccinated in the priority rounds.

Jamaica’s own vaccination programme was proceeding more slowly, constrained by the supply limitations of the COVAX facility and the bilateral donation arrangements through which the island was acquiring doses. The disparity between the vaccination pace of diaspora countries and Jamaica prompted diaspora advocacy around vaccine equity and access, and several diaspora health organisations in the United States and United Kingdom were engaged in efforts to support Jamaica’s programme through donations, logistics support, and skills transfer.

Jamaica Economy: Recovery Takes Shape

Jamaica’s economy entered 2021 recovering from the approximately nine per cent GDP contraction of 2020—the island’s worst economic performance since the 1970s. The contraction had been driven principally by the catastrophic collapse of tourism, which had effectively ceased for significant portions of 2020 as borders closed, airlines suspended operations, and global travel demand evaporated. The services sector had contracted sharply, and the fiscal position had been strained by the combination of reduced revenue and emergency health and social spending.

By Q1 2021, the earliest signs of recovery were visible. Jamaica had maintained an open border approach throughout the pandemic, relying on health protocol enforcement rather than border closure, and this approach was beginning to pay dividends as US vaccination progress increased potential visitors’ confidence in travel. Stopover visitor arrivals in Q1 2021 were below Q1 2020—itself a period during which the pandemic had not yet materially disrupted arrivals—but the trend was improving month-on-month. The government’s Resilient Corridors programme, which maintained health-protocol-compliant tourism zones in Montego Bay and Negril, provided a structured framework for the sector’s careful reopening.

The construction and financial services sectors demonstrated greater resilience than tourism through the pandemic, and their continued positive performance provided the economic floor below which the overall contraction did not fall further. The government’s fiscal response to the pandemic—including the CARE programme of social support, the Job SAVE employment retention scheme, and the capital expenditure adjustments required by the collapse in revenue—was managed within the framework of the IMF programme, preserving the fiscal credibility that had been built over years of painful consolidation.

Virtual Diaspora Symposium: June 2021 Announced

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade announced through Q1 2021 that the Jamaica Diaspora Symposium — a virtual gathering serving as a substitute for the delayed in-person 9th Biennial Jamaica Diaspora Conference — would be held on 18 and 19 June 2021. The announcement was welcomed by diaspora community organisations that had been managing the absence of the biennial’s structured engagement since the 2018 8th Biennial Conference, and working group structures and thematic areas were being developed through Q1 in preparation.

The symposium’s virtual format reflected the continued COVID-19 constraints on in-person international gatherings. Community organisations broadly supported the virtual approach as the responsible choice given the pandemic context, while maintaining that the in-person conference—targeted for 2022—was an irreplaceable element of the diaspora engagement calendar. The relational investment that diaspora members make in the biennial gathering—the networking, the face-to-face conversations with government ministers, the reconnection with Jamaica physically—could not be fully replicated in a virtual environment, however well-designed.

Returnees and Windrush

Voluntary return migration from the United Kingdom continued through Q1 2021, albeit at a pace constrained by COVID travel requirements and the general suppression of international movement. UK Jamaican community members who had made the decision to return to Jamaica—whether for retirement, lifestyle, or the pull of family—were navigating COVID-era complexities including pre-departure testing, health documentation requirements, and the logistics of international shipping for household goods. PICA’s Returning Residents duty concession processing continued to provide the primary administrative framework for formal returnee processing.

The Windrush Compensation Scheme in the United Kingdom continued to process claims through Q1 2021, with the scheme’s administrators working through the backlog of applications from Jamaican and other Caribbean community members wrongly affected by the hostile environment policies. Community advocacy organisations maintained pressure on the Home Office for faster processing, more proactive outreach to potential claimants, and more generous awards. The Windrush scandal’s ongoing resolution was an active element of the Jamaica High Commission’s advocacy agenda in London.

Outlook for Q2 2021

The second quarter of 2021 will be defined by the Virtual Jamaica Diaspora Symposium in June and by the trajectory of COVID vaccination in both Jamaica and the diaspora countries. If vaccination progress in the United States and United Kingdom allows the gradual relaxation of travel requirements through Q2, diaspora travel to Jamaica may begin to recover from its COVID-suppressed levels, providing an important economic boost to tourism-dependent communities. The remittance picture will be closely watched for any moderation from the pandemic-era peaks as US stimulus effects begin to fade. And the MFAFT’s preparation of the June symposium will signal the quality of institutional preparation that the government is bringing to the biennial engagement cycle.

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 2021.