JAMAICANS with unpaid student loans who migrate to the United States (US) will face significant challenges when they seek to update or renew their immigration status.

Manager of the Loan Servicing Department at the Students’ Loan Bureau (SLB) Cheryl Surjue said the Government of Jamaica and their US counterparts have forged a partnership to identify Jamaican immigrants with outstanding student loan debts.

She cited cases of several categories of professionals who she said have migrated to the US, among other countries, leaving unpaid student loans, pointing out that, “when they leave we are not able to fully track their whereabouts, [and] those loans tend to go bad”.

“People who may have migrated on the J1 visa and want to renew their status in the US, before they can actually do that, there’s an arrangement where the US Government needs to find out from us [Jamaica] if this person is indebted to the Government,” Surjue said.

This, she said, is to determine whether an individual has an outstanding loan balance before their immigration status is changed.

Surjue emphasised that clearing the loan would not only involve bringing the account up to date, but also fully settling the debt.

“It is at this point that you’ll find most of these beneficiaries will actually start servicing their loans because we did not know and they didn’t communicate with us that they migrated,” she explained.

Surjue said the arrangement with the US Government has assisted the agency in collecting outstanding loans.

She, however, cautioned that it is best if persons notify the bureau prior to migrating and arrange to service their debt.

“Before you get to that point, we want persons to be responsible borrowers. This is why we’ve actually launched our financial literacy programme, to know how we can assist and how the beneficiaries may go about repaying their loan — and not wait until it gets to that point of the loan being bad or we have to solicit debt collectors to try and locate you,” Surjue said.