By Lloyd Williams, Senior Associate EditorA JAMAICAN attorney who practises immigration law in the United States (U.S.) is suggesting that the Jamaican Government get involved earlier in the process which leads to the deportation of hundreds of Jamaicans each year.
Also, he is proposes that the Government set about training certain categories of skilled worker, and export them to job markets which need their services.
The suggestions came from George E. Crimarco, who has been practising immigration and nationality law in the state of Florida for the last 15 years, in an interview with The Gleaner on the weekend.
GREW UP IN AMERICA
In his view, a lot of deportees who Jamaica is being saddled with grew up in America. "They left here when they were two, three, four years old, with their families. They are products of the American society, not the Jamaican society and the Americans are abdicating any kind of responsibility for them." But that was not to say that Jamaica should not be responsible for its own nationals, Mr. Crimarco added.
He said that more than a year ago, he suggested to the Minister of National Security, "a system by which the Government could identify these people (deportees) at a very early stage in the proceedings.
"Right now, the way it works is that the Jamaican Government finds out about these people who are being deported, at the end of the proceedings after they have already been ordered deported by a judge. The first time you learn of them is when the immigration authorities make a request to the Jamaican Government to provide them with travel documents to facilitate the transfer."
Under international law, Mr. Crimarco said, the United States is supposed to notify the Jamaican Government when it takes a Jamaican national into custody. But that was not being done. "Unless the inmate requests that his consulate be notified of his apprehension, it's not done routinely."
"I have proposed to the Minister that we could set up a database whereby we would inform all of the local police authorities in the United States that we want to know when a Jamaican is arrested before anything else happens. In that way we can be apprised of the situation, we can see if there is relief available to him."
Mr. Crimarco said he could give at least 30 examples from just "my small sphere of things, of Jamaicans who had been deported from the United States, who were actually American citizens and didn't know it, by reason of deriving their citizenship from their parents."
"There are a lot of ways you can become a citizen and not know it. I have one (case) right here now that I am working on to get a passport for, for him to go back."
INACTIVE GOVERNMENT
He said the Jamaican Government was not "taking the steps to ensure that these people don't have another claim to nationality." But they should not have to do that, he said, because they were not lawyers, they were diplomats. "Lawyers should be doing that on behalf of the Jamaican Government," he added, pointing out that deportees sometimes were dual nationals. They could be nationals of Canada and nationals of Jamaica, he said, citing an example.
"There is no law that says that Jamaica has to be the one that accepts them," Mr. Crimarco explained. "So there are a lot of solutions to that problem. But it takes some initiative on the part of the Jamaican Government, rather than just kowtowing to what the Americans say because you are being saddled with a lot of deportees... Maybe if you cut it by 20 per cent you are talking about a big number."
Q: What response have you had?
Crimarco: They didn't tell me go away, but it seems to me like it wasn't a priority item. Whether it was a monetary problem because maybe the Jamaican Government doesn't have enough money to fund it, I don't know, but I am sure that if the American Government were to know that the Jamaican Government was trying to regularise the procedure by which travel documents are obtained, they would partially fund the programme because they also complain about the length of time it takes for the Jamaican Government to produce travel documents for people.
"From the time a request is made, sometimes it can take three or four months and that person has to be housed and fed by the United States Government while they are waiting for the travel document. So there are a lot of ways to attack that problem. There is no way to say that we can't deport these people. There could be legislation that could be proposed for Jamaica to strip these people of their Jamaican citizenship.
"I don't know, I am just talking off the top of my head because I haven't researched it, but there might be legislation that says that if you have committed a crime abroad, you could jeopardise your Jamaican citizenship...
"But some harsher measures have to be taken to cut down on the flow of deportees. Because these people are not coming back here to be plumbers and carpenters. They know one way to live and that's by crime. And at their age they are not coming back here to learn a trade. Nor is there any trade for them to be employed in, in Jamaica, because there is no employment in Jamaica. And even if they want to learn a trade there is no programme available for them to do so. There are a lot of things that can be done."
"Another thing that the Jamaican Government needs to look into, which I have also proposed to them," Mr. Crimarco said, "is to try and copy the example of some countries like the Philippines," nationals of which, he said, were his largest clientele. "Their priority in the Philippines is to train people and export them and let them earn money abroad and send back the money in remittances.
"You have teachers and nurses here, there are no jobs for them here. Why not export them? Set up your training programmes, train them well. Jamaican nurses are in demand anywhere they go and they have a reputation of being hard workers, good workers and very diligent and efficient."
He said there were a lot of things that could be done by the Government itself to encourage the export of skilled workers abroad, "because you produce more skilled workers than you have a demand for in Jamaica. There is a demand for skilled workers not only in the United States but in Canada, and there is a supply of skilled workers here. All it takes is a proper structure and a proper training programme to be put together to have that done." The United States government did not discourage immigration", the lawyer said, it discouraged immigration of people who were not of benefit to the United States. "It has never proposed legislation nor enacted legislation to slow down the flow of skilled workers because the American educational system does not produce sufficient skilled workers to fit certain occupations. It produces a lot of lawyers, a lot of engineers but it doesn't produce a lot of doctors, nurses or teachers.
"So whereas an American teacher may look at US$45,000 a year as a small wage, a Jamaican immigrant may not. She could feed herself and maybe five other people back home on that kind of money.
"It (the exportation) has to be done on a structured basis. I can't be done in a haphazard way where the government doesn't control", Mr. Crimarco said.
He cited the example of the Philippine Government setting up an organisation called the Philippine Overseas Employment Agency. "All it does is regulate the flow of foreign workers in and out of the country. They send them to Saudi Arabia, they send them to Dubai domestic workers as well as skilled workers. They know they have not got enough jobs to provide for all their people so it's better to train them to be sent abroad.
"Jamaica has an excellent educational system, right up to the tertiary level, but once you graduate there are no jobs available", said Mr. Crimarco, who grew up here.
THE JAMAICAN ECONOMY
"The Jamaican economy certainly thrives on remittances. Remittances could be made even bigger but it has to be done in a structured way which leaves the charlatans out of it". It's his reference to people who come here, put advertisements in the newspapers, recruit people, take off with the money, "and you never see them again".
Mr. Crimarco suggested a system by which the government would regulate "who comes to recruit, who they recruit and the terms of the recruitment." He lauds the Ministry of Labour's farm, hotel and cruise-ship worker-employment programmes, but pointed out that they were low-paying, temporary by nature, and did not lead to permanent residency." That needs to be transformed, embracing other professions," he suggested. "Jamaican workers are not lazy. They are not given the opportunity to work and that often leads to frustration, and frustration leads to crime".
