We can’t say we weren’t warned, since powerful signals came through the spoken word during the United States presidential election campaign.

Yet, happenings, as the policy direction of President Mr Donald Trump takes concrete shape, have left many in shock.

News reports emerged earlier this week that migrants in the USA, including Jamaicans, are living in fear, with many whose status is yet to be legalised choosing to stay home rather than go to work, and even keeping their children out of school.

All that is because of worry about the activities of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) personnel, who are busy rounding up thousands of undocumented people — mostly from Latin America and the Caribbean — now living and working in the USA.

The expectation must be that in the not too distant future there will be a flood of people returning home on being deported, with no clear vision of a viable future.

Hence the warning from US-based attorney Ms Midas Dionnie Wynter Pfunde that: “…I think the [Jamaican] Prime Minister [Dr Andrew Holness] should be bracing himself on how he is going to rehabilitate these individuals that have not been in the country for the last four to seven years, that have not been back to Jamaica…

“Some of them don’t have a home there; their whole family is living in the United States, they have been here for the last five to seven years and they will need some kind of rehabilitation, so that’s food for thought…”

Such is the current tension we hear that some migrants who are legally resident in the United States are fretful about their future.

Migration issues aside, the world, and more especially those countries on the lower economic rung, have been left stunned by what’s being described as an “unprecedented” 90-day freeze on US aid programmes globally.

We are told that the US Administration’s intent is to take time to review which of myriad humanitarian, development, and security programmes around the world will keep getting monetary support.

Given Washington’s current overt, undiluted posture of “America first” we are left to assume that some aid programmes will be cut or removed completely.

And even for aid that’s eventually resumed, a 90-day freeze is certain to have far-reaching effects.

The World Health Organization (WHO), from which the United States has withdrawn — among the new Administration’s first acts — has warned of serious negative impact of a funding pause on assistance programmes such as those targeting HIV.

“Such measures, if prolonged, could lead to rises in new infections and deaths, reversing decades of progress and potentially taking the world back to the 1980s and 1990s when millions died of HIV every year globally, including many in the United States of America,” said the WHO.

The aid freeze appears to fly in the face of previous US policy to woo and win friends primarily using socio-economic assistance and cooperation.

All of the above, plus talk such as trade tariffs as potential economic weapon, should motivate all countries, especially those most vulnerable including Jamaica and its Caribbean neighbours, to strive by might and main for economic independence, using all available tools.

The begging bowl has no future as far as we can make out.