Quarterly Jamaica Diaspora & Returnee Update — October to December 2021

Published: 2 January 2022 | Jamaica Homes News

Key Takeaways

• Full-year 2021: record remittances approaching US$3.49 billion: As 2021 drew to a close, Bank of Jamaica data indicated that full-year remittance inflows were on track to reach approximately US$3.49 billion — a new all-time record for Jamaica and a remarkable testament to the diaspora’s sustained generosity and financial solidarity through the pandemic years. The figure would represent the third consecutive year of strong growth and the highest annual remittance total in the nation’s history.
• Q4 2021 GDP growth: approximately 6.7 per cent: Jamaica’s fourth quarter economic performance confirmed the sustained momentum of the post-pandemic rebound, with PIOJ data indicating GDP growth of approximately 6.7 per cent in Q4 2021, driven by tourism’s continued recovery, strong construction activity, and resilient services sector performance. Full-year 2021 posted a strong recovery from 2020’s pandemic contraction.
• COP26 Glasgow: Caribbean climate vulnerability and diaspora advocacy: The 26th Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC, held in Glasgow in November 2021, placed the Caribbean’s extreme vulnerability to climate change at the centre of global climate diplomacy. Jamaica’s delegation, Caribbean civil society organisations, and diaspora advocates participated in and around the conference, pushing for faster emissions reduction commitments and more accessible climate finance for small island states.
• Omicron variant: new COVID threat clouds year-end: The identification of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 in South Africa in late November 2021, and its rapid global spread through December, introduced fresh uncertainty into Jamaica’s reopening trajectory and the diaspora’s travel and engagement plans. The variant’s higher transmissibility and uncertain severity profile prompted travel restrictions across multiple countries and dampened the anticipated Christmas season diaspora travel to Jamaica.
• 9th Biennial Conference 2022: planning begins in earnest: With the 9th Biennial Jamaica Diaspora Conference tentatively scheduled for June 2022 in Jamaica — the first in-person biennial since the pandemic began — the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade began active planning through Q4 2021, with the conference format, venue, and thematic structure all under discussion and a decision on logistics expected in early 2022.
• Virtual Diaspora Symposium follow-through: seven months on: Seven months after the Virtual Jamaica Diaspora Symposium of June 2021 — the substitute for the delayed in-person 9th Biennial Conference — the MFAFT was completing its review of the symposium’s recommendations and preparing the implementation plans that would carry the diaspora engagement agenda into the 2022 conference cycle.

Introduction: A Record Year Ends With New Uncertainty

The fourth quarter of 2021 carried two sharply contrasting stories. On one hand, it was the closing act of a remarkable year for Jamaica’s diaspora relationship: remittances were on track for a historic record, the economy was recovering strongly, and the spirit of diaspora solidarity that had animated the pandemic years was still very much alive. On the other hand, the emergence of the Omicron variant in late November introduced a destabilising new uncertainty into the reopening trajectory that the diaspora and the government had been working toward for the better part of a year.

The Christmas season — typically the peak of both remittance sending and diaspora travel to Jamaica — unfolded in the shadow of Omicron. Many diaspora members who had planned to spend Christmas in Jamaica for the first time in two years reconsidered those plans as the variant spread rapidly through the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada in December. Flight bookings dipped. Some community events were cancelled. But the remittance flows continued: the diaspora’s Christmas financial solidarity with Jamaican families did not falter, even as physical travel was again disrupted.

This quarterly update draws on 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.

Remittances: A Historic Record in the Making

As the fourth quarter of 2021 closed, Bank of Jamaica data was pointing to a full-year remittance total of approximately US$3.49 billion — a figure that would represent the highest annual remittance total in Jamaica’s recorded history. The Q4 2021 flows were strong, supported by the traditional Christmas uplift that sees diaspora members send additional funds for family celebrations, school fees, January term preparations, and the broader cultural imperative of financial solidarity with Jamaican relatives through the festive season.

The 2021 record was built on the extraordinary conditions of the pandemic years: reduced personal travel to Jamaica freed diaspora members’ spending budgets for formal remittance transfers; heightened anxiety about family welfare in Jamaica — where the healthcare system faced severe strain through COVID waves — motivated increased giving; and the US government’s stimulus payments directly and indirectly boosted the liquidity of Jamaican-American households, a significant proportion of whom channelled a share of stimulus proceeds into remittances. These factors had combined to produce three consecutive years of strong remittance growth, culminating in the 2021 record.

The United States remained by far Jamaica’s largest remittance source, with the Jamaican-American community’s concentration in sectors such as healthcare, construction, transportation, and domestic services providing a reasonably stable employment base through the pandemic. The UK contributed the second-largest share, with the British-Jamaican community’s extensive presence in the National Health Service and social care sectors providing employment security even through COVID’s worst phases — indeed, NHS and care workers’ incomes were in some cases enhanced through pandemic overtime and premium payments.

Analysts expected the 2021 record to be the peak of the pandemic-era surge. As COVID restrictions lifted, diaspora travel would resume and discretionary spending would flow back toward in-person visits rather than formal transfers. US stimulus payments were ending. The exceptional solidarity conditions of the pandemic would gradually normalise. But the structural floor of Jamaica’s remittance corridor had risen through the pandemic, and the post-peak level was expected to remain well above the pre-2020 baseline.

Economic Performance: Q4 Confirms the Recovery’s Breadth

PIOJ’s Q4 2021 GDP data confirmed growth of approximately 6.7 per cent for the quarter, making it the fourth consecutive quarter of positive growth following the COVID-19 contraction of 2020. The full-year 2021 performance was a significant recovery from the 10-plus per cent GDP contraction of 2020, driven by tourism’s partial but meaningful return, the buoyancy of the construction sector, and the continued strong performance of financial services and business process outsourcing.

Tourism remained below pre-pandemic levels in absolute visitor numbers — the combination of lingering COVID caution among US and European travellers and the complications of travel testing requirements kept stopover arrivals significantly below 2019 figures — but the recovery trend was clear and accelerating. Cruise ship operations, which had been entirely suspended through most of 2020 and much of 2021, were resuming cautiously, and the major hotel chains with Jamaica properties were reporting strong forward bookings for 2022. The tourism outlook for 2022 was genuinely optimistic for the first time since the pandemic began.

Construction remained one of the economy’s most dynamic sectors through Q4, supported by both the government’s infrastructure programme and private sector activity in the residential and commercial property markets. The residential market was seeing sustained demand from diaspora buyers — who had benefited from pandemic-era savings and were deploying them into Jamaican property — and from domestic buyers in the growing middle-income market. This demand was one of the factors sustaining price appreciation in Jamaica’s formal housing market and reducing the affordability of formal-sector housing for first-time buyers and returnees.

COP26 Glasgow: Caribbean Climate Advocacy on the World Stage

The 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP26, convened in Glasgow from 1 to 12 November 2021, and was one of the most significant international diplomatic events of the year for Caribbean nations and their diaspora communities. For Jamaica and the wider Caribbean, climate change is an existential threat: rising sea levels, increasing hurricane intensity, ocean warming, and the economic disruption of climate events collectively pose risks to the viability of small island life on a multi-decade horizon. COP26 was an opportunity to make these realities visible to the global powers whose emissions trajectories will determine the Caribbean’s climate future.

Jamaica’s official delegation to COP26, led by Environment and Climate Change Minister Matthew Samuda, engaged in the formal negotiating process, advocating for stronger emissions reduction commitments from major emitters and improved access to climate finance for vulnerable developing nations. The Caribbean Community’s collective position — captured in the CARICOM leaders’ pre-conference statement — called for limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and for substantial increases in climate adaptation finance for small island developing states.

In the margins of COP26, Caribbean civil society organisations and diaspora advocates participated in the conference’s extensive programme of side events, making the case for Caribbean voices in global climate decision-making. The Jamaican diaspora’s presence at COP26 — through both the formal delegation and diaspora civil society participants — reflected the community’s growing awareness of climate change as a direct threat to Jamaica and to their own families’ well-being. The Glasgow Climate Pact agreed at COP26 fell short of the 1.5 degree trajectory’s requirements in many analysts’ assessments, but the political signal of global commitment to accelerated emissions reduction was an incremental advance on the pre-COP26 baseline.

Omicron Variant: Fresh Uncertainty at Year-End

The identification of the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 in South Africa at the end of November 2021 introduced fresh and significant uncertainty into the global COVID-19 trajectory at precisely the moment when the reopening of international travel and the return of diaspora movement to Jamaica had seemed most imminent. Omicron’s rapid global spread through December — outpacing all previous variants in its transmissibility — prompted immediate travel restrictions across multiple countries and generated considerable alarm in public health communities.

For Jamaica’s diaspora travel recovery, the timing was acutely difficult. December is traditionally the peak month for diaspora visits to Jamaica, with Jamaican families reuniting for Christmas, New Year, and the extended holiday season. The emergence of Omicron in late November came just as diaspora members were finalising their travel plans, and the uncertainty about the variant’s severity, its vaccine-evasion characteristics, and the travel restrictions being imposed disrupted those plans significantly. Some diaspora members who had planned their first Jamaica visit since the pandemic began chose to defer to 2022; others proceeded with heightened anxiety.

By the close of Q4, the early data on Omicron was suggesting that its severity — while highly transmissible — was somewhat lower than Delta in vaccinated populations, providing cautious grounds for optimism that the variant would not produce the ICU crises of earlier waves. But the full picture was not yet clear, and the new year was beginning under the shadow of a new wave that would test healthcare systems and diaspora communities alike through January and February 2022.

Virtual Diaspora Symposium: Seven Months On

The Virtual Jamaica Diaspora Symposium of June 2021 — convened as a substitute for the delayed in-person 9th Biennial Jamaica Diaspora Conference — had produced a set of working group recommendations and government responses across the diaspora engagement agenda. Seven months on, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade’s implementation review was assessing progress against those commitments and preparing the diaspora engagement strategy for the 2022 conference cycle.

The symposium’s virtual format had allowed broader participation from diaspora members across multiple time zones than a single in-person gathering could achieve, and the working group outputs had been substantive. But community organisations acknowledged that virtual engagement lacked the relational energy of in-person gatherings, and that the absence of the physical conference had reduced the political attention and media visibility that the biennial traditionally generated. The anticipated in-person 9th Biennial in June 2022 was seen as an opportunity to restore the energy and depth of engagement that the pandemic years had constrained.

Biden Administration: First Year in Immigration Policy

As 2021 drew to a close, the Biden administration completed its first year in office with a mixed record on immigration from the Jamaican diaspora community’s perspective. The administration had reversed many of the preceding administration’s most aggressive enforcement actions, ended the Remain in Mexico programme, and terminated the travel bans targeting Muslim-majority countries. Its internal enforcement posture — focused on serious criminal convictions rather than broad community sweeps — had reduced the ambient anxiety among long-settled Jamaican communities about ICE raids and workplace enforcement actions.

However, the administration had not managed to advance comprehensive immigration reform through Congress, with the Build Back Better Act’s immigration provisions — including a pathway to legal status for millions of undocumented immigrants — stalled in the Senate. For the undocumented Jamaican community in the United States — estimated in the tens of thousands — the first year of the Biden presidency had provided some relief from the most acute enforcement pressures without resolving the underlying legal vulnerability that characterised their status. PICA continued receiving deportation flights at a baseline pace consistent with the Biden administration’s targeted enforcement approach.

Returnees: Year-End Assessment

Voluntary return migration from the United Kingdom maintained a steady flow through Q4 2021, with the Christmas season bringing a cohort of returnees making their final move to Jamaica for retirement or lifestyle reasons. PICA’s Returning Residents duty concession processing continued through the quarter, with UK-based returnees the predominant voluntary returnee group. The housing challenge — with demand concentrated in parishes and communities where formal sector supply was limited and prices had risen significantly through the pandemic period — remained the most significant practical barrier to smooth returnee reintegration.

The Windrush Compensation Scheme in the United Kingdom continued to process claims from Jamaican and other Caribbean community members wrongly affected by the Home Office’s hostile environment policies. By the close of 2021, the scheme had paid out approximately £34 million to around 1,000 claimants, but advocacy organisations maintained that thousands of eligible claimants had not yet come forward, and that the scheme’s outreach and claims-management process needed significant improvement. The Jamaica High Commission in London maintained active engagement with affected families and with the scheme’s administrators.

Outlook for 2022

As 2022 begins, the defining near-term question is how quickly the Omicron wave will pass and whether the post-Omicron environment will allow the international travel recovery — and with it the in-person 9th Biennial Jamaica Diaspora Conference in June — to proceed. If Omicron’s lower severity in vaccinated populations proves as significant as early data suggests, the wave may peak and recede faster than Delta, clearing the way for a genuine reopening by spring. If Omicron produces more severe outcomes than currently indicated, the recovery timeline will be extended and the June conference may again face disruption.

On the remittance side, 2022 will almost certainly produce a lower total than 2021’s record, as the exceptional pandemic-era factors that drove the surge normalise. The US labour market’s continued strength will determine how deep the moderation is, and the UK’s cost pressures — with energy bills set to rise substantially in April under the new price cap — will test the British-Jamaican remittance corridor. The full-year 2022 remittance figure will provide the first clear reading of the post-peak trend.

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 2022.

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