FORMER Jamaican Prime Minister P J Patterson suggests that remittances fuel wasteful consumption and discourage able-bodied family members from seeking employment. But these negatives pale in comparison to the actual needs and the positive spin-offs which they trigger, he says.

Patterson, who is also chairman of the Ramphal Commission on Migration and Development, was delivering the Walter Rodney Memorial Lecture last week on “Migration and Development in the Commonwealth: A Caribbean Perspective” at the University of Warwick Ramphal Building in Coventry, United Kingdom. Following is an excerpt from the lecture:

A striking feature of international migration is the increasing mobility of women. This is partly due to the rise in demand for household and care workers and, thereby, the increasing participation of women in all migration streams.

Forty-nine per cent within the Commonwealth are women, some of whom are obliged to leave their children behind in the desperate search for an income to sufficiently maintain them. For us in the Caribbean, we have already begun to observe some of the consequences — particularly on the nurturing of children and the social fabric. We cannot condone any attempt to exploit those who are engaged in the provision of household services and domestic care.

From the days of imperial conquest, those who settled abroad were sending remittances and profits back home to the Motherland. So the remittance phenomenon is by no means novel. Cross-border financial flows had topped US$414 billion by the start of the new millennium.

Remittances received by developing Commonwealth countries amounted to US$73 billion in 2007, accounting for 3.2 per cent of GDP (Gross Domestic Product). For the least developed, 6.2 per cent of GDP was attributable to remittances.

The figures for the Caribbean are even higher — averaging seven per cent and in some cases as high as 19 per cent of GDP in Jamaica and 20 per cent for Guyana. In several Caribbean countries, these figures exceed the value of Foreign Direct Investment and vastly more than comes from Official Development Assistance.

We are well aware of possible negatives which remittances may have — fuelling wasteful consumption, discouraging able-bodied family members from seeking employment. But these pale in comparison to the actual needs and the positive spin-offs which they trigger.

There is mounting evidence that more and more of these resources are being channelled into housing, small business development and pension schemes.

Our Commission will consider how the transaction costs of remittance flows may be reduced and how these significant financial flows may best be protected in a volatile and somewhat turbulent foreign currency exchange market.

We need to create an investment climate which will attract more of these resources into economic activity.

In all four developed Commonwealth countries, the percentage of those with tertiary education is markedly higher among immigrants than among the native-born. The difference is largest in the UK, where the proportion of tertiary-educated among the foreign-born was 35 per cent, nearly double that of the native-born (20 per cent).

The emigration rates of the highly skilled in Commonwealth countries differ widely. Countries with small populations, especially island states, experience high emigration rates of their highly skilled population. In the case of Barbados, Gambia, Guyana, Jamaica, Mauritius and Trinidad and Tobago, the percentage of the highly educated population living abroad varies from 40 per cent to over 70 per cent. The small island states are the ones that are most directly affected by the emigration of highly skilled workers, the so-called ‘brain drain’.

The Caribbean has some of the highest rates of migration of its tertiary-educated labour force. These rates run as high as 70 per cent. Between 1990 and 2000, some 60 per cent of Caricom (Caribbean Community) nationals, who benefited from higher education provided by Member States, moved to OECD (Organisation for Economic Development) countries. This figure could increase with the shortage of particular skills in the EU (European Union) for medical personnel, scientists, teachers and information technologists.

WHO data reflect that the highest emigration rates for doctors now working in the OECD are to be found in small island developing states and Africa. Of the 10 countries with migration rates of over 50 per cent, eight were small states and six of these were from the Caribbean. The rate reached 89 per cent for Antigua and Barbuda and was over 70 per cent in Grenada and Guyana.

Overall, the expatriation rates for nurses were even higher than those for doctors. Among the 10 Commonwealth countries with the highest expatriation rates, the percentages residing in the OECD countries ranged from 66 per cent to 88 per cent. Of the 20 countries with rates over 50 per cent, 19 were small island developing states.

Eight of the 10 with the highest expatriation rates were from the Caribbean with Jamaica, Grenada, Belize, St Vincent and the Grenadines and Guyana exceeding 80 per cent.