STIGMATISED in a culture to which some had to re-adapt after living overseas, a group of deportees – Jamaicans ejected from foreign countries for immigration and other violations – have banded together to form a support network for others like themselves.

Positive Deportees in Action (PDiA), a year-old group consisting of some 25 persons deported over time, also acts as mentors for young persons in the East Kingston community where group members live, hoping to prevent them making the mistakes they did – like giving scant attention to education and falling afoul of the law.

The group also assists with school fees and books to those most in need.

Junior, one of PDiA’s members who asked to be identified only by his first name, was deported to Jamaica six years ago after he ran into trouble with the law.

Junior, a college graduate, had also overstayed his United States visitor’s visa.

On his forced return to Jamaica, said Junior, he immediately noticed the discrimination leveled at persons like himself.

Despite this, when coordinator of the group, social worker Carol Cooke, extended an invitation for him to join PDiA, he was not quick to accept, he told the Sunday Observer.

But later, having observed what he described as the positive impact the group was having on his community, Junior, 47, said he felt he had a part to play.

“I joined it because I want to make a difference for my community; because I see a lot of youngsters drop out of school and idling, and I know the importance of a youngster being in school,” he said.

“So as an elder person, I try to do the best I can.”

Junior now says he is getting a positive response from the youths in the community whom he counsels on a daily basis.

“Seem like they really need a big brother figure, and so I counsel them and give them some good guidance,” he said.

He believes that if he had been involved in a similar programme as a youngster, his life would have ended up differently.

“I never get anything like this,” he said.

“Maybe if I had a big brother things would have turned out differently for me.”

But even as he reaches out to help others, Junior says he is still learning to deal with the daily stigma that deportees have to face.

“I feel let down and sometimes I feel like I am unwanted, but I have to realise that I am a grown person so I don’t let it be something that holds me back; because as an individual I have to find ways and means of making my life useful,” he said.

While not casting blame on Jamaica’s justice system for the discrimination, Junior believes that it has done nothing to prevent the stigma from taking root, saying no one has sought, over the years, to learn the real reasons why people get deported.

“There are a lot of people who get deported who are not deserving of the treatment the United States government hand down to them,” he said.

The US accounted for 15,082 of the total 26,437 – or 57 per cent – of persons deported since 1994, national security minister Dr Peter Phillips said October 4, 2005 in Parliament.

Phillips, who at the time was responding to queries on the link between deportees and crime, said some 18,857 of the deportees were characterised as ‘criminal aliens, and announced that a major impact study was in the works, to be done in collaboration with the Planning Institue of Jamaica.

He said then that his ministry was engaging the various governmental and non-governmental agencies that assist with the reintegration of deportees for a “convergence of efforts” into one programme.

DPiA is itself making plans to expand its programme and is seeking financing for a half-way house for deportees who have nowhere to go.

“It would be a place where they get medical attention so if they have HIV/AIDS they would be able to get treatment,” said Junior.

Dennis, another PDiA member who requested anonymity, says he enjoys nothing more than being able to effect change in his community, despite having to deal with his own issues that come with being a deportee.

He was sent back to Jamaica two years ago after serving time in a US prison on a conspiracy charge.

“I personally see this as something that is needed in Jamaica for the upliftment of both deportees and other people, because we don’t only deal with deportees alone but with the whole inner-city development,” Dennis told the Sunday Observer.

The discrimination that deportees face daily stems from their being ‘misunderstood’, he said, adding that not all of them are criminals as some people believe.

“Being at the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong crowd, and things like that, could make you eligible to do all a life sentence,” he said.

Dennis also points to the psychological impact on persons sent to a country where they have no home nor support system to give them a new start.

“When they come here, some might don’t even have a house or somewhere to take their first shower; some don’t know where to turn – if they are suppose to go up the street or down – and they just look up in the sky and their minds blow from there,” he said.

Cooke, a social worker with the Ministry of Health, said the group was in the process of changing its name to Positive Youths in Action (PYiA), saying the stigma surrounding deportees was blocking its funding.

“We now have two proposals for funding and just because of the name ‘deportee’, one was turned down because they said they didn’t want to have anything to do with deportees right now,” Cooke said.

The group plans to register as a company under the new name.

“We were given $20,000 by Phillip Paulwell (Member of Parliament for East Kingston/Port Royal) to register the group, and we are in the process of doing that now,” Cooke said.

The social worker is not a deportee but said she felt moved to help, having found in the course of her job that two of every five men she met on the street corners in certain communities were deportees.

“It came to mind that I could do something like this because they were being discriminated against and could get no jobs,” said Cooke.

Many of the deportees she encountered, she told the Sunday Observer were never involved in criminal activities, but were at the wrong place at the wrong time.

“Some of them went in prison and came out doing a lot of positive things so we thought we would put this thing together and go through and see how best we could help in alleviating the discrimination,” said the DPiA coordinator.

Since the group was formed last July, Cooke said it has helped to alleviate the crime problem in East Kingston through collaboration with the Peace Management Initiative and the Jamaica Social Investment Fund and its mentoring of young men.

“There was a serious crime problem in the Dunkirk area before we intervened,” she said.

The Jamaica Chamber of Commerce has also provided training for DPiA members in management, leadership, conflict resolution, entreprenuership and family life, putting members in a better position to reach out to youngsters in the volatile communities.

“Many of these youths are dropping out of school because they want to fit in with the gun crowd, and losing their life; and so we help them (find alternatives),” said Cooke.