Editorial | Possibilities for CARICOM

America’s placing of 11 Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries among the 75 from which it recently halted the processing of immigrant visas caused a flurry of diplomatic activity by regional governments seeking carve-outs from Washington.

That is understandable. For like in many other parts of the world, the possession of a US visa, for permanent residency or periodic visits, is a highly-prized commodity among Caribbean citizens, large numbers of whom annually emigrate to the United States or visit temporarily.

But while they seek to protect their perceived national interests, Caribbean governments must address the Trump administration’s policies on immigration with a clear-eyed pragmatism, including determining the positives, if any, that may lie in America’s actions and collectively plan solutions to mitigate the downsides.

There are two fundamental, overlapping takeaways to be considered, and planned for, by CARICOM governments. With respect to the downside, the halt of visa processing is unlikely to be the end of the Trump administration’s strategies to slow emigration from countries like Jamaica. Recall the initiative for applicants having to make prohibitive security deposits against being awarded visas and their entry into the United States. This will probably have a chilling effect on visa applications in countries where it is applied.

And even after Donald Trump’s presidency, America’s approach to immigration, even if more welcoming of migrants, won’t return to the pre-Trump era. US immigration policy will, perhaps, pivot to quotas, targeting people with highly specialised skills and less emphasis on family ties.

REMITTANCES

In the new environment, Caribbean countries won’t be able to rely, to the extent they have in the past, on remittances from their nationals in the United States that help shore up regional economies as is now the case with Jamaica, where the value of remittances is nearly 19 per cent of GDP and over 65 per cent is from the United States.

A possible perverse and paradoxical outcome of the Trump immigration policies, however, is their potential for slowing the Caribbean’s so-called ‘brain drain’ and an opportunity, if appropriately grasped, to use this development to help spur domestic and regional growth, and in the development and rejuvenation of CARICOM.

The magnitude of the migration of the Caribbean’s most highly educated nationals to developed countries was captured in a 2006 paper by International Monetary Fund (IMF) researcher Prachi Mishra, who found that between 1965 and 2000, “a majority of Caribbean countries have lost more than 50 per cent of the labor force in the tertiary education segment and more than 30 per cent in the secondary education segment (9–12 years of schooling)”. Jamaicans were a major part of this outflow.

“For example, the tertiary educated labor force (with more than 12 years of schooling) in Jamaica and Guyana has been reduced by 85 per cent and 89 per cent, respectively, due to emigration to OECD member countries,” Ms Mishra wrote.

In Jamaica’s case, over the 35-year period, 78 per cent of the people with tertiary-level education went to the United States. Migration from other CARICOM members to the United States was in similarly high proportions.

Immigration from CARICOM, and the wider Caribbean, has remained high, and the evidence suggests that like in the earlier period, the better educated are the most active migrants. The United States continues to be the destination of choice.

EMIGRATION

In a 2023 World Bank paper, economist Pascal Jaupart assessed emigration from 15 Caribbean countries and concluded that in six of the 15, “the number of emigrants expressed in percentage of the in-country population is higher than 50 per cent”.

“In Dominica, the volume of emigrants is even larger than the population living in the country, and the ratio stands at 109 per cent,” he wrote. “The Bahamas and Belize have the smallest numbers of emigrants in relative terms (13.7 per cent and 13.3 per cent, respectively). These are relatively high ratios by international standards, however. In absolute terms, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Jamaica have the largest diasporas, with well over one million emigrants worldwide each.” By Mr Jaupart’s calculation, Jamaicans living abroad in 2020 was approximately 38 per cent of the domestic population.

Although the ratios, in some instances, differ from earlier analyses, Mr Jaupart, too, found that it is the educated and skilled who leave in higher numbers.

He said: “The tertiary-educated leave Caribbean countries in large numbers, putting pressure on human capital stocks ...

“Depending on the Caribbean origin country, between 24 per cent and 58 per cent of all emigrants located in OECD countries are high-skilled workers ... While high-skilled people are emigrating, skills gaps in several economic sectors have appeared, including in education, health, information technology.”

In the United States, like with other Caribbean nationals, the highest concentration of Jamaican workers (25.7 per cent in 2019) is in the health and medical fields.

With the choking off of the emigration safety valve, Caribbean governments will face increasing pressures from their educated and trained populations, especially young people. This demands, even in difficult circumstances, a sharper pivot to strategies that deliver robust growth instead of the tepid expansion in GDP that has been the trend in CARICOM for decades.

The situation also provides an incentive to accelerate the transformation of CARICOM into a genuine single market and economy and for the regional holdouts to end their dithering on the free movement of people, allowing for a better market allocation of the region’s available skills.