MORE than 12,000 Jamaicans were deported in the last four years, many of whom have left families behind, with potentially dire consequences.

Over the years the majority of those deported have been men. Last year, for example, of the 3,076 people deported, 2,687 were men aged 18 years and older, according to statistics from the Ministry of National Security. In 2008, of the 3,234 people deported, 2,759 were males, while in 2007, of the 2,984 people deported, 2,491 were males. In 2006, 3,003 people were deported with males accounting for 2,532 of that number.

It is a situation that local researchers say needs to be examined, especially given the negative implications for the families they leave abroad.

“Deportation brings about a very tragic turning point in the lives of many, many families, particularly the cases I know about in the United States,” said criminologist Professor Bernard Headley.

The University of the West Indies lecturer added that there is a current case of a young man in his twenties — the father of an infant child — who is facing deportation.

“He supports his mother and supports a small child. When he is deported to Jamaica, he is leaving behind an infant child who he will never be reunited with again. Mothers are usually US citizens, but that child is without a father — without a main breadwinner…” Headley, who has done research on deportation, told the Sunday Observer.

Such separation, he said, is devastating for children and boys in particular.

“We are talking about children growing up without fathers since most of the deportees are men. We are talking about families without a male figure and what effect that has on the children and the male child. That effect can be devastating,” Headley said.

For one thing, boys, he said, are prone to involvement in crime and delinquency.

“Those children grow into teenagers without fathers. Those children then become street children and are attracted to gangs. I am not saying all children are attracted to gangs but that it is most likely, when you isolate and banish him (a father) to Jamaica,” Headley noted.

Dr Herbert Gayle, an anthropologist of social violence, took a similar view.

“A father has four roles — provider, protector, role model and emotional supplement to the family. Think about a father who has infant children and the state forcefully removes this parent, you understand the tremendous impact of him not performing his roles,” he said. “When you remove a father who is the minister of security for his family, you create physical insecurity in his child and one of the results of that is violence.”

Added Gayle: “The father is crucial. When you pull a man from a family, if the mother has a headache she doesn’t have anyone to lean on. When the father is absent and abused and treated as though he is marginal, then the boy begins to see himself as marginal. Girls need to see their fathers act as a caring and loving person in order to trust the opposite sex.”

Beyond the man’s value to his family, the anthropologist said, are implications for the man himself. He recalled the case of a depressed, deported man who had to be helped by Fathers Incorporated.

“He simply couldn’t deal with Jamaica, and not just the unemployment. The pace and everything else was different from what he was used to. The point is, too, that he had nobody here. He was completely suicidal,” Gayle told the Sunday Observer. “There was a situation one night when he was on a bridge. He called and said he was going to dive off on his head. I spoke to him on the phone and went for him.”

Added the anthropologist: “Deportation is not funny. They are largely depressed. We are social beings. We are not designed to live on our own and just go on chuck it.”

Meanwhile, given the implications for family life, Headley said it is necessary for Government to take steps to prevent at least some Jamaicans with families abroad from being sent home.

“If our government is big and bad enough to face down the powerful United States over a man US authorities say they want for trafficking in narcotics and illegal guns, then, surely, that same government ought to be bold enough to make meaningful representation whenever US authorities intend to deport a US-Jamaican permanent resident who is a model father and faithful breadwinner,” he said.

Gayle, for his part, has suggested that the authorities take account of not only a father’s critical role to his family but also his economic value to the country, in deciding whether to deport.

“Every single case of deportation must be examined at the family level and at the community level. You have some people who are deported from a community, and that community becomes unstable. So we have to look at the impact he (a man) can have, both negative and positive, on community,” he said. “If you are sending a chap back to his country, (you should also consider) what you are losing in terms of his personal skills. Not everybody is just a criminal. A lot of people commit a little crime and if they were not migrants, no one would have thought of it as anything more than a misdemeanour.”

Jurisdictions have taken a hard line against illegal migrants and others who run afoul of the law, especially since the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US. But even before 9/11, the United States had begun to crack down on migrants, courtesy of the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act.

The act provides the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement extensive powers while limiting judicial review of deportation and detention decisions made by immigration judges. At the same time, it has expanded the scope of crimes that are grounds for deportation, according to Headley’s Deported Volume I.