WE are told in yesterday’s Sunday Observer that more than 12,000 people were deported to Jamaica over the last four years. Many, many thousands more have been deported over the last two decades.

Talk never stops about deportations and the consequential difficulties for the Jamaican society. Invariably, Jamaicans focus on the perceived worsening of their country’s crime problem as a result of hardcore criminal deportees from the United States, Britain and elsewhere entering the local underworld.

The articles in yesterday’s edition remind us of another side of the story — the plight of the deportees and their families.

The truth is that not all deportees are hardcore criminals. In a real sense, many are not criminals at all. As we understand it, since the passage of the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act in the United States, even unpaid fees for traffic offences can become grounds for deportation of non-US citizens, including green card holders.

Anthropologist Dr Herbert Gayle framed the situation clinically: “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.”

In the case of a 40 year-old deportee, a husband and father who left Jamaica at age five/six, he, if he is to be believed, had reformed himself after early infractions and had become a law-abiding, regular family man. His family in the United States, including young children, are now not only economically deprived as a result of his deportation but are suffering serious psychological problems that could have long-term, negative effects.

Experts all agree that the sudden removal of a parent from a household can have devastating consequences for the children left behind. In the case of deported Jamaicans, most are males. Many are fathers.

The experts say, and experience in everyday life teaches, that the departure of the father from the household can become a trigger for boys especially, to become attracted to street culture, including gangs. Some become prone to violence and criminality in the absence of the father.

We would expect that the authorities in North America and Britain — from whence the bulk of Jamaican deportees originate — have long had to cope with such anti-social behaviour as a direct result of deportation-induced broken homes and families.

There is clearly a case to be made to overseas governments that, in their own self-interest, they need to be more selective rather than broad-brush in their approach to deportations.

To the extent that a more selective approach reduces the number of people deported, Jamaica will clearly benefit. That means there is every reason for the Jamaican Government to make the case as strongly as possible, if it’s not already doing so.

We empathise completely with criminologist Professor Bernard Headley that “If our government is big and bad enough to face down the powerful United States” over the proposed extradition of Mr Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke, then it “ought to be bold enough to make meaningful representation” on the deportation issue.