We love Jamaica, but we’re voting with our feet
Dear Editor,
The vast majority of Jamaicans are loyal to their homeland, this piece of rock. When we migrate, we long for home. We want to return to build that big house and show off our success.
Whether we go to Canada, Britain or the United States, all developed societies, for some unknown reason, despite the lack of opportunity, crime, State bureaucracy, etc, we love Jamaica.
United States Consul General Michael Schimmel told us that 159,000 applications have been submitted by Jamaicans wishing to travel to the US, the most in 20 years. He said that Jamaicans spent US$25 million (approximately $3 billion) in application fees this year to enter the US. Only one per cent of those successful didn’t return home, and only 35 per cent were turned down.
However, their conclusion as to why this massive number of Jamaicans are applying to travel to the US is flawed. He says that, perhaps, the economies in both countries are booming or that their is stability in ours. Schimmel must be listening to Ralston Hyman, Dennis Chung, or the governor of the Bank of Jamaica Bryan Wynter. Schimmel, please stop feeding at the source.
Unlike what Juliet Holness is reported to have said, the vast majority of Jamaicans, when we spend $20 million, it seems like $20. We are applying to the US Embassy for visas because there is a scarcity of opportunities here, because crime is intolerable, because we want to have our children born there and have the same freedom and rights as Americans, because we can get a temporary illegal job that pays us a year’s salary in one month.
We travel to the US because, as our Minister of Education says, it takes a university graduate in Jamaica an average of two years to obtain a job, and it takes 40 years of hard work to earn the equivalent of 10 years of the same hard work in the US, Britain or Canada.
Schimmel, that is why we are voting with our feet, not because the economy is “booming or stable”. We are losing hundreds of jobs in our sugar industry, and the bauxite industry is to follow. We are leaving not because we love your country more than ours.
So, like your own Judge Judy would say, “Don’t urinate on my leg and tell me that it is raining.”
Mark Clarke
Siloah PO, St Elizabeth
mark_clarke9@yahoo.com
