Barrington Salmon Writes

Trump Revokes Protective Status for 59,000 Haitian-Americans

By Barrington M. Salmon

 

Contributing Writer, The Final Call

Originally published, December 4, 2017

During his 2016 campaign for president, candidate Donald Trump told a crowd of Haitian-Americans in Miami’s Little Haiti that he’d be their champion. On Monday, Nov. 20, Elaine Duke, acting Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security announced that the administration has revoked the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for tens of thousands of Haitians in Miami and around the country.

Former DHS Secretary John Kelly had hinted broadly that the administration might move in this direction after a review earlier this year, but the decision left Haitian-Americans dismayed, angered and concerned about the future of this affected group.

The administration plans to forcibly return more than 59,000 Haitian-American families – some of whom have lived in the US for more than a decade – and 27,000 American-born Haitian children. The decision comes two weeks after DHS officials announced that the agency was terminating TPS for 2,500 Nicaraguans and delaying an evaluation of 57,000 Hondurans. The delay gives Hondurans an automatic six-month extension.

Marleine Bastien, the voice of Haitian women and the unofficial spokesperson for the Haitian community at large, expressed disappointment.

“It was somewhat expected but people have been thrown into a complete state of shock. They are anxious with good reason,” said Ms. Bastien, founder and executive director of Haitian Women of Miami, Inc (Fanm Ayisyen Nan Miyami). “Trump started a witch hunt and has been criminalizing immigrants,” “He said he would be our champion but that was a lie. I wonder how he would do it if it were Europeans.”

“There’s no way to prepare people living here for eight to 20 years to return. We have 58,000 Haitian families who have deep roots in their respective communities. They’re businesspeople, homeowners, professionals, individuals who are gainfully employed. It will be very difficult for them to pick up and leave. We’re talking about people’s lives. We will continue to advocate on their behalf.”

Winston Barnes, a Jamaican vice mayor of the City of Miramar and news director of WAVS, 1170 AM radio, said there’s real sadness in Haitian-American circles in South Florida.

“There’s a lot of pain in the Haitian community. There have been actual tears that have been shed,” said Mr. Barnes, a longtime radio veteran and talk show host of Taking Care of Business. “I started getting reactions on Monday. “Young people realize that their and other people’s lives are going to change. I thought this was going to end because this is not an administration that cares about immigrants, especially black people. This group is the easiest to target.”

“When candidate Trump came to South Florida, he went to Little Haiti. That’s all they needed. That was a ploy of a politician and they played right into it.”

Ms. Bastien, who was born in Haiti but has been an outspoken advocate on immigrant and women’s issues for the last 30 years, said Trump’s decision to deport the affected Haitians is political. She and other critics castigated administration officials for acting as if conditions in Haiti have returned to normal.

She said she was part of a delegation that traveled to Haiti on a fact-finding mission on Aug. 14-21.

“The government can’t absorb the 60,000 Haitians poised to be sent back to Haiti and since 2013, 65,000 Haitians have lived on the Haiti-Dominican Republic border,” Ms. Bastien explained. “Haiti still has not recovered from the 2010 earthquake which killed 250,000 people. Even the most powerful country in the world still hasn’t recovered from Katrina.”

“Haiti has been reeling from natural disasters. Ten thousand people have died from a cholera epidemic and 1.2 million Haitians are contaminated and are still sick. The United Nations promised to pay $400 million to pay the victims. The US has refused to contribute. Hurricane Matthew killed 2,000 people in the worst storm in 50 years. It left the entire South Peninsula in ruins. Then Maria hit earlier this year – Haiti has had its share of calamities and disasters.”

Fabienne Josephat, a South Florida-based writer, echoed the anguish that is racking Haitian communities around the US.

“I’m very distraught. The announcement was heartbreaking,” said Ms. Josephat, who grew up in Haiti and emigrated to the US at age 18 and is author of the novel, ‘Dancing with the Baron’s Shadow.’ “I realize that is was temporary but this was just cruel. I feel like it’s just cruel not just for Haitians but anyone seeking refuge but is being thrown out of the country. What hurts most is administration officials acting as if everything is normal in Haiti.”

M.J Fievre, a Haitian-born writer, teacher, publisher and interpreter, said some of her friends on TPS had been bracing for the coup de grace, but they’re still overwhelmed by the news.

“We know that TPS was not meant to be permanent, but the situation in Haiti is still extremely difficult. What are these people going back to?” Some say that Haiti is back to normal. Unfortunately, “normal” in Haiti includes perpetual political turmoil, 80 percent unemployment, teachers on strike. Recent natural disasters have fueled the ongoing famine and poverty crises.”

“Everyone is disgusted. What mental healthcare will be available for the returnees? During the earthquake, during the storms, people lost their friends and family. The healing process is long – and it will be made even longer by the relocation. Haiti does not offer the kind of counseling that my fellow Haitians will need.”

Tom Jawetz, vice president for Immigration Policy at the Center for American Progress (CAP), called removing the protections for the 50,000 Haitians unprincipled and heartless. In New York City, many of the Haitians are in childcare, elder care and healthcare, he said, and the impact felt because of this decision will have implications of an economic and domestic nature. Sending these families back will also dry up remittances, he added.

“The administration’s position to eliminate Haiti’s TPS is completely unsensible,” he said. “When Duke sat down, she wasn’t working in a vacuum. Six month ago, John Kelly said that conditions on the ground met the statute to continue TPS. There were two additional hurricanes which left damage to roads flooding and other problems. The idea that Duke looked at things on the ground and came to a different conclusion is ludicrous. This is in many ways a war against immigrants.”

“People in the administration at the very highest levels saw the political value of Donald Trump’s attitude towards immigration.”

According to the Center for American Progress, the secretary of homeland security, in consultation with the secretary of state, has the discretion to grant TPS to individuals from countries where armed conflict, environmental disasters, or other extraordinary and temporary conditions make it impossible to return without jeopardizing their lives. Estimates show that more than 320,000 people in the United States hold TPS from 10 designated countries: El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Syria, and Yemen.* By statute, TPS is granted for set periods of time, ranging from six to 18 months. The Trump administration recently revoked Nicaragua’s TSP and officials are in the process of deciding the fates of citizens from El Salvador and Honduras.

Research by CAP’s Nicole Prchal Svajlenka, Angie Bautista-Chavez, and Laura Muñoz Lopez show that TPS holders are long-term, integrated members of communities across the United States. On average, recipients from Honduras have lived in the United States for 22 years, recipients from El Salvador an average of 21 years, and recipients from Haiti an average of 13 years. Nearly one-third of households with Salvadoran, Honduran, and Haitian TPS holders have mortgages. This measure is indicative of TPS holders’ active pursuit of homeownership, which brings along with it important contributions to their local economies in the form of sales and property taxes. Ending TPS, and thereby removing the ability of recipients to work legally, would likely increase the risk of foreclosure for families with TPS members. And given the spatial concentration of TPS holders, eliminating TPS could have negative economic reverberations for entire communities.

In addition, several estimates point to potential negative economic effects facing TPS holders and the United States as a whole should the program be eliminated. CAP analysis shows that if Salvadoran, Honduran, and Haitian workers with TPS were removed from the labor force, the United States would lose $164 billion in gross domestic product (GDP) over the next decade. Furthermore, if TPS holders lost their work authorization, it would result in a $6.9 billion reduction to Social Security and Medicare contributions over a decade, as calculated by the Immigrant Legal Resource Center. Finally, if TPS holders could no longer work in their current jobs, employers would experience $967 million in turnover costs.

Serge Bellegarde, Ms. Josephat and Ms. Fierve, spoke at length about their concerns and Haiti’s future.

“I’ve been following this and to tell the truth, I’m not surprised by this decision,” said Mr. Bellagarde, a retired translator and reviewer for the Organization of American States. “It was short-sighted to follow Trump but some Haitians did. Trump is a perfect opportunist who doesn’t have a clue with what’s going on in Haiti. There’s a racial aspect. As far as I’m concerned, he’s a racist. I never expected better There’s a reason why Trump is saying things are hunky-dory Either you’re lying or you have a philosophy of getting rid of immigrants.”

“It’s a tragic situation because a lot of Haitians who’ve been living here have businesses and homes. Families will be divided in half. If people were to calculated the amount of taxes Haitians pay it would be considerable. Haitians are not here on a free ride. They have paid taxes, revitalized communities. Trump doesn’t care about that and those around him are clueless.”

Ms. Fievre said Haiti isn’t in a position to properly cater to returning Haitians because of a raft of challenges and the after-effects of a succession of natural disasters.

“I used to go to Haiti at least once a month. My visits became less frequent after the earthquake. I haven’t visited in the past two years, but I still have family there, and I’m in touch with them every day,” she said. “After the earthquake, Hurricanes Irma and Maria have caused the poverty and instability to worsen. The food insecurity crisis continues after natural disasters decimated crops and irrigation canals in many areas ― a massive blow to farming and agriculture. The medical infrastructure is inadequate. Haiti remains unsafe.”

Mr. Bellegarde agreed, citing corruption and an absence of leadership.

“In Haiti, you have a situation where there is no money. People are protesting on the streets because of the budget approved by the government,” he said. “The government is remobilizing the army with money from where we don’t know. There is a lack of vision and the politicians don’t establish priorities.”

“We have a government crisis in Haiti. Those leading the country are a bunch of incompetents. They are corrupt leaders without a knowledge how or the skills to govern.”

By Barrington M. Salmon

Originally Published in The Final Call, January 31, 2018

In 2017, 82 percent of all of the growth in global wealth flowed to the top 1 percent, while billions of men, women and children who comprise the bottom 50 percent saw no increase at all. In 2016, annual share dividends from the parent company of fashion chain Zara to Amancio Ortega, the world’s fourth-richest man were worth approximately 1.3 billion Euros. And Stefan Persson, whose father founded H&M, received 658 million Euros in share dividends last year.

By contrast, Anju, who earns just over $900 dollars a year, sewing clothes in Bangladesh for export often works 12 hours a day, until late at night. She often has to skip meals because she hasn’t earned enough money.

Americans aren’t immune from the scourge. In 2016, according to the Bergen Center, the overall poverty rate in the US is 13.5 percent — 43.1 million people. But when the near-poor and new poor are added, the number of Americans who live in poverty is in excess of 150 million with African Americans, Hispanics, children and seniors being hit particularly hard. The middle class has been hollowed out as millions of ordinary Americans who played by the rules, have seen their lives affected by stagnant wages, the loss of millions of jobs to globalization and automation, the shredding of the social safety net by Republic politicians and corporations hiding trillions of dollars in overseas tax havens. Those who can find jobs often have to contend with low wages, less than fulltime hours and no benefits. And business owners the only concern is the bottom line and increasing profits.

With fiscal year 2016, Walmart’s revenue was $482.1 billion. The company, the largest publicly-owned retail company in the world, employing about 2.2 million employees worldwide, has the dubious distinction with Amazon – which grossed $128 billion last year – of having employees who are paid so little that they qualify food stamps and other forms of public assistance. The Walton family is worth $130 billion.

This troubling income disparity is detailed in an Oxfam report, titled, Reward Work, Not Wealth, released in mid-January which documents in stark detail the widening chasm between rich and poor, and chronicles the mélange of reasons why despite working hard, most of the poor and middle class people remain mired in poverty.

“The billionaire boom is not a sign of a thriving economy but a symptom of a failing economic system,” said Winnie Byanyima, executive director of Oxfam International. “The people who make our clothes, assemble our phones and grow our food are being exploited to ensure a steady supply of cheap goods, and swell the profits of corporations and billionaire investors.”

Ms. Byanyima said female workers often find themselves off at the bottom of the heap. Across the globe, women consistently earn less than men and are usually in the lowest paid and least secure forms of work. By comparison, she said, nine out of 10 billionaires are men.

“Oxfam has spoken to women across the world whose lives are blighted by inequality. Women in Vietnamese garment factories who work far from home for poverty pay and don’t get to see their children for months at a time,” Byanyima said. “Women working in the US poultry industry who are forced to wear diapers because they are denied toilet breaks.”  

Oxfam notes that 2017 saw the biggest increase in the number of billionaires in history, with a billionaire being made every two days. There are currently 2,043 dollar billionaires worldwide. Nine out of 10 are men. Billionaires also saw a huge increase in their wealth, an increase that was enough to end extreme poverty seven times over.

This extraordinary wealth that is concentrated in the hands of a select few is erected on the shoulders of low-paid workers who are paid poverty wages and denied basic rights.   

“It is being built on the backs of workers like Fatima in Bangladesh, who works sewing clothes for export. She is regularly abused if she fails to meet targets and gets sick because she is unable to go to the toilet,” the report’s authors said. “It is being built on the backs of workers like Dolores in chicken factories in the US, suffering permanent disability and unable to hold their children’s hands. It is being built on the backs of immigrant hotel cleaners like Myint in Thailand, sexually harassed by male guests and yet often being told to put up with it or lose their jobs.”

The report was launched as 3,000 political and business elites gather for the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

The impact, as stated by ‘Reward Work, Not Wealth’ is clear: employees working long hours at a minimum or sub-minimum wages; people working without benefits reveals how the global economy enables a wealthy elite to accumulate vast fortunes while hundreds of millions of people are struggling to survive on poverty pay. Oxfam’s report outlines the key factors driving up rewards for shareholders and corporate bosses at the expense of workers’ pay and conditions. These include the erosion of workers’ rights; the excessive influence of big business over government policy-making; and the relentless corporate drive to minimize costs in order to maximize returns to shareholders.

According to the report, billionaire wealth has risen by an annual average of 13 percent since 2010 – six times faster than the wages of ordinary workers, which have risen by a yearly average of just 2 percent. The number of billionaires rose at an unprecedented rate of one every two days between March 2016 and March 2017. It takes just four days for a CEO from one of the top five global fashion brands to earn what a Bangladeshi garment worker will earn in her lifetime. And in the US, it takes slightly over one working day for a CEO to earn what an ordinary worker makes in a year.

Oxfam found that it would cost $2.2 billion a year to increase the wages of all 2.5 million Vietnamese garment workers to a living wage. This is about a third of the amount paid out to wealthy shareholders by the top five companies in the garment sector in 2016. But greed, nonchalance and a lack of political will informs the lack of action of those enjoying the fruits of other people’s labor.

Howard University Political Science Professor Dr. Wilmer Leon, III, said he expects that the economic vice will tighten and the situation will get worse before it gets better.

“This will be the status quo for the foreseeable future,” he told The Final Call. “It will get worse before we see any real evidence of things getting better. It’s going to take a lot more suffering and deprivation before people come to realize that this is our world not theirs.”

“We’re not servants for an elite group of corporatists. What Donald Trump is using as a tactic of leverage is race. It has always been used in this country as a source of division and a distraction from the real issue of labor being taken over by management. The political elite tells white people, ‘you have it better because you ain’ no nigger.”’

Both Prof. Leon, host of Inside the Issues on Sirius/XM, and The Rev. Derrick Harkins said the political elite and the wealthy should have security concerns as the inequalities breed unrest.

“It’s amazing because throughout history, imbalance has always been dangerous, socially and economically. Here we have the one percent on one end and so many people on the far end,” said Rev. Harkins, senior vice president for Innovation in Public Programs at Union Theological Seminary in New York. “This imbalance is not just dangerous but immoral. We have to get corporate leaders to understand that being equitable amounts to fairness and equity.”

“All of us benefit when there’s fairness. We can’t ever have a fair society with such extremes. In theology, if you are solely wrapped up in possessions, that is a road to failure. It’s disheartening and threatening to see what’s going on. The US is pretty isolated but there is real unrest and instability elsewhere. The outcome could be very troubling if we don’t address it.”

Prof. Leon said the Jan. 16 report indicates that eight men own the same wealth as 3.7 billion people.

“I can’t even begin to describe how atrocious it is and impact on large numbers of people,” he said. “If you ask economists and experts what is the biggest threat it’s security. The issue has to do with the increased accumulation of wealth. And the immigration debate has to do with people trying to improve their their standard of living, quality of life.”

He explained that these wealthy men go to get the resources to generate their wealth from Africa, for example South Africa for diamonds and to the Republic of Congo for seven or eight other important minerals.

“These countries, unfortunately, are not able to maximize the presence of these raw materials, because the raw materials is extracted and sent overseas to be processed, then sold on world market,” Prof. Leon said. “So you have a one carat raw diamond mined in South Africa sent to India, Israel or Switzerland to be cut into stones and sold in Brussels.”

“White supremacy plays an integral role in this, as does ethnocentrism. It’s not an accident that former colonial powers, now neo-liberals, are preying on the resources and human capital in China, Vietnam, and Central and South America. Nobody cares that people are suffering or the conditions under which they live. Oxfam trying to change balance of power of globalization and exploitation.”

DC Attorney Quentin Driskell surmised that making changes on the ground would make a definable difference.

“I think any new contracts like in Africa with extractive industries, it makes sense that there would be provisions for local sourcing. Very little comes from local community,” said Mr. Driskell, a criminal defense and employment discrimination lawyer. “There should be some type of apprenticeship, training and mentorship. They also need to start sourcing from the local community. That has potential because once you learn, that provides a certain amount of independence and self-sufficiency. It’s possible, though, that these contracts might be a violation of trade agreements.”

“What no one seems to be doing is attacking the corporations themselves. People should start looking at corporations and revoke their charters at the local level. For example, pharmaceutical reps pitching oxycodin said it wasn’t addiction. These corporations have been lying to you. And suing them doesn’t really stop them because it’s built into the business model. But revocations would be one solution.”

According to Forbes magazine, in 2007, the top 20 percent of the wealthiest Americans 80 percent of all financial assets. The richest 1 percent population owned 35 percent of the country’s total wealth, and the next 19 percent owned 51 percent. Thus, the top 20 percent of Americans owned 86 percent of the country’s wealth and the bottom 80 percent of the population owned 14 percent. In recent years, that gap has widened.

At the same time, the stock market has roared to 26,500 points, corporations, insurance companies and banks—many whose greed and reckless actions triggered the 2007-08 meltdown—are awash in hundreds of billions of dollars. And the general public is deeply angered by crony capitalism, corporate greed and the recent passage of tax theft masquerading as tax reform that Republican leaders engineered that shifted $1.5 trillion from the middle class to the wealthiest one percent.

“What’s playing out on the world stage we’re watching that play out here,” Rev. Harkins said. “The sad thing is that men and women who voted for Trump are excitedly waiting. I recently read an article about coal industry and they’re feeling betrayed. The rich will get rewards. Do the others think they’ll get some of those spoils? Some operate under this illusion. Some people mistakenly think that they’ve been invited to party but they never got an invitation.”

Ms. Byanyima said people were sold the idea that trade-fueled growth would spread around the world, carried by democracy, on a rising tide that would “lift up all boats” but that failed and over time, the unspoken contract between the elites and the 99 percent that unfettered market globalization and liberalization should benefit us all has been broken.

She said government officials must begin to protect those they purport to serve by strengthening labor laws and being proactive in ensuring that workers get a living wage and work in safe environments and decent conditions.

No one should expect corporate and political leaders to suddenly become enlightened, Ms. Byanyima said, but the answer lies in public pressure, tougher laws and governments taking control again by using regulations to impose business ethics. In addition, the public, advocates and activists also have to support and encourage more business trailblazers, such as the multibillion-dollar Mondragon in Spain and Amul in India, which as considered leading innovative models based on the equity – worker-owned companies they’ve allowed to develop.

“We are putting the case to business leaders that they should not pay a penny in shareholder dividends and executive bonuses until all their workers are getting a living wage and their producers a fair price,” Ms. Byanyima said in a recent column in Al Jazeera. “We do not have the patience to wait or hope. We need to look to the law. And new laws must be pushed into existence by the collective power of people. We will only close the gap between men and women’s pay by legislating it closed. At the speed we’re going now, it will take 217 years. Iceland has caught on.”

“We need to throw the book at irresponsible corporate tax behavior which alone costs poor countries $100 billion a year. That book needs to hit the corporate lobbyists while we’re at it. We need to be less worried about disruptive new technologies, but more proactive in understanding and harnessing them properly. The utility of every invention depends on how it is owned and controlled for the public good … law has the power to ensure that nobody should work on a level of pay that they cannot live a  decent life.”

She said that in the past, governments would value the masses because they needed them for their factories and armies, and so they would feed, educate and keep them healthy. That’s changed today. 

“Globalization has lifted many people out of the most abject poverty and we celebrate that,” Ms. Byanyima said. “But it has been even more successful in boosting an elite few into superyachts stuffed with stupendous wealth, while dumping hundreds of millions of people onto the flotsam and jetsam at the bottom. We are beginning to be left to trust that those at the top will rescue those below. But the worst-case scenario is – they won’t. There will be no value in it.”

“The masses will be left adrift to fend for themselves. It’s up to us all to make sure that doesn’t come to pass.”

 

Originally printed in the Atlanta Black Star,  January 2, 2018

Nearly 17 Years After ‘Life and Debt’ Jamaica Remains In a Precarious State, Thanks in Part to the IMF and World Bank

Almost 17 Years After ‘Life and Debt’ Jamaica Remains in a Precarious State, Thanks in Part, to the IMF and World Bank

By Barrington M. Salmon

Tourist brochures and adverts paint a lush picture of Jamaica, a 4,411 square-mile “patch of land” that is sun-kissed beaches, blue skies, puffy clouds, cool breezes and pastel sunsets.

But Jamaica is much more than the backdrop of a tourist playground. Move beyond the trendy tourist spots, Jamaicans say, and you’ll find the real treasure of these islands: 2.9 million resilient men and women making their way in the real world. Most get up and go to their jobs every day, work hard, provide for their families, raise their children, struggle to make ends meet.

Jamaica is no different from other Caribbean islands and developing countries with some of the challenges it faces. Simmering below the veneer of relative calm are a mélange of seemingly intractable problems and stark realities that Jamaicans on island and in the Diaspora say they all must confront if the island-nation is to provide more equitably for all its citizens, create a stable and safe environment and be competitive in the 21st century.

Dr. Stephen Vasciannie, president of Jamaica’s University of Technology, cited the high level of crime and violence, poverty and inequality (with their attendant challenges), and general economic issues, such as the high level of unemployment, low salary levels and low productivity as challenge priorities.   

“To be sure, these problems interact with, and reinforce, each other,” said Vasciannie, who served as Jamaican ambassador to the US from 2012 to 2015. “Thus, the crime level is stimulated, at least in part, by economic malaise, while poverty and inequality contribute substantially to a sense of alienation among many people.”

“Jamaica’s problems are not of recent vintage. Various solutions have been attempted, and some have worked to an extent. So, for example, we have accepted it as a matter of faith that improvements in the provision of education will enhance the country’s prospects, and especially the prospects of the poor. So, yes, we can undermine the high crime rate, reduce poverty and inequality, and improve economic prospects through improved education for all.”

But the problem, Vasciannie said, is that raising educational levels in significant measure tends to be a long term prospect, while Jamaica’s is grappling witth a host of problems in the present.

“We always wonder, therefore, if progress is actually being made,” said Vasciannie, formerly Professor of International Law at the University of the West Indies and one of the founding members of the National Democratic Movement.

Hotelier Franklyn Eaton echoed Vasciannie’s comments on the inequalities that exist in Jamaica and said failure to correct this could lead to a conflagration.

“In terms of growth, colonialism is still at play,” said Eaton, born and raised in Jamaica but who is currently is general manager of Villages of Stonehaven in Tobago. “The Spanish are back and have built a number of hotels. There are rosy jobs for Europeans but for Jamaicans, generally, the salaries are fairly low at about $100 (US)/week. The question is, how do we climb out of poverty? Politicians look for short-term solutions and do very little long-term planning. This is going on all over the Caribbean, not just Jamaica. It’s a Caribbean malaise.”

Eaton, who has been in the hospitality industry in Europe, Jamaica and the Caribbean for 27 years, is one of many who fault elected leaders for studiously ignoring festering problems like crime or corruption, but who instead offer lip service or only touch the problems around the edges. What these politicos seem most adept at, Eaton and other critics say, is lining their pockets rather than leading and doing just enough to get themselves re-elected.

For all of Jamaica’s accomplishments, whether it’s in the cultural or music arenas, track and field or academia, the island of almost three million people has been mired in a decades-long economic quagmire that officials from the International Monetary Fund fear could damage any future growth.

An overriding element – a powerful force out of Jamaica’s control – is its indebtedness in billions of dollars to the likes of The International Monetary Fund, the InterAmerican Development Bank and the World Bank.

According to the World Bank, by 2012 Jamaica had accumulated debt equal to 145 percent of its gross domestic product, adding that over the last 30 years, Jamaica‘s real per capita GDP increased at an average of just one percent per year, making it one of the slowest growing developing countries in the world.

Jamaica’s problems mirror that of Greece and Zimbabwe, although Jamaica hasn’t had to default on its debts like Greece or experienced the runaway inflation of Zimbabwe under former president Robert Mugabe.

IMF officials have helped the government implement what the institution says is an ambitious reform program designed to stabilize the economy, reduce debt and fuel growth. The reform program, which the IMF said has garnered national and international support, is part of a comprehensive package with the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank each agreeing to provide US$510 million between April 2013 and March 2017. Meanwhile, the IMF committed a US$932 million funding program to the government through its Extended Fund Facility (EFF) covering the same four-year period.

The CIA Factbook notes that Jamaica’s slow economy growth over the last three decades has been impeded by: a bloated public sector which crowds out spending on important projects; high crime and corruption; red-tape; and a high debt-to-GDP ratio. The author note, however, that Jamaica has made steady progress, in collaboration with the IMF, in reducing its debt-to-GDP ratio from a high of almost 150 percent in 2012 to about 115 percent in 2017. While the lending institutions hope that their prescription will push Jamaica towards producing an annual primary surplus of 7 percent, so that it can reduce its debt burden below 60 percent by 2025, that has not happened as evidenced by economic growth which only reached 1.6 percent in 2016. “The Holness administration faces the difficult prospect of maintaining fiscal discipline to make debt payments while simultaneously attacking a serious crime problem. High unemployment exacerbates the crime problem, including gang violence fueled by the drug trade,” the Factbook notes.

While IMF and World Bank officials often speak in clinical terms about the financial help they offer and the impacts, there are those who are convinced that these lending regimes are just a modern-day version of economic slavery.

Filmmaker Stephanie Black is a harsh critic of the IMF. Her film, “Life and Debt,” made in 2001, is an examination of how IMF and World Bank policies, determined by the G-7 countries and led by the United States, have a significant impact on poor developing countries. She contends that the IMF promotes an agenda of monetary austerity, currency devaluation, and lowering wages. The stated goal is to reduce inflation by balancing a nation’s loan repayments and imports with its export earnings. The result is usually a recession. The World Bank takes a longer-run perspective. It aims for structural adjustment, which means trying to transform a borrower nation’s economy into a free-market economy. It typically proposes market deregulation, sometimes accompanied by new lending from the World Bank and private lenders.

These policies are supposed to benefit developing nations’ economies by integrating them into the global market. What actually happens is the people of those nations suffer, while commercial banks in the global north collect a great deal of interest. In Jamaica, only 5 percent of total money borrowed since 1977 has been able to stay inside the country.

The conditions that Black recounted in her documentary are largely still at play today, with financial and economic experts and politicians offering differing assessments of the progress Jamaica has made.

Researchers at the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) found in 2015 that because of its agreement with the IMF, Jamaica is saddled with the most austere budget in the world, with the country paying a high interest on its debt which directs money to these institutions and away from public investment in infrastructure, education and other projects.

And according to CitiBlog Global, “Jamaica’s interaction with the IMF has had a long-lasting effect. Globalization and the establishment of so-called ‘free trade zones’ have destroyed the local agriculture. For example, the local dairy industry collapsed due the import of powdered milk from the United States, which was cheaper than regular milk, thus undercutting Jamaican farmers. The problems continued when the banana industry was forced into decline when the United States complained to the World Trade Organization about “unfair” labour practices, despite the fact the Dole Food Company had a monopoly on most of the banana trade.”

Yet despite criticism and questions about the IMF and World Bank’s roles in making Jamaica economically subservient, Vasciannie offers an opposite view.

“I believe that the IMF/World Bank/IDB Loan saved Jamaica. The loan came at a time when the Government could not find money to pay civil servants and so on,” he said. “Thus, without the loan, the prospect of massive layoffs, strikes and protests was real and substantial. We were also at the point of not being able to pay for our imports, with all the implications that could follow from that.  And we had a mountain of debt, with no clear way of paying down on it.  So, the situation was dire. 

“In the circumstances, the Government had no choice but to accept the loan, and did so gratefully. Now, some years later, stability has been returned, but we need growth. I do not think we can blame the IMF/WB/IDB for lack of growth.  They have provided the means by which we can promote growth, but we have to take the matter forward.” 

Karen Marks Mafundikwa, a Jamaican-born award-winning documentary filmmaker, producer and director, said the effects of Jamaica’s colonial and imperialist past casts a large shadow on the present.

Jamaica’s problems, she said, are rooted in the island’s colonial past. New York Times travel writer Luisita Lopez Torregrosa supports this in her story ‘Jamaica Beyond the Beach,’ explaining that “the British turned the island into a huge sugar plantation, its wealthiest colony in the Caribbean and the hub of slave trade in the Americas. Planters built magnificent houses high above their sugar cane fields, and lived lives of idleness, gorging on drink and wanton sex with slaves. And she adds, Jamaica never recovered from slavery; former slaves remained deeply impoverished, and the economy almost totally dependent on foreign capital, mining and raw materials, while importing food and other essentials.”

Mafundikwa cited the criminal justice system as an example of lingering colonial influences.

“Jamaica just legalized marijuana. Its use goes back centuries as a healing agent and part of the cultural spiritual practice,” said Mafundikwa, who produced the 2014 film, ‘The Price of Memory,’ which detailed efforts by some in Jamaica’s Rastafarian community to get reparations from Queen Elizabeth II and the British government.

“Before the (Jamaican) government criminalized thousands of youth. Decriminalization is happening in Europe and across the world,” she said. “Our debts, the laws we pass, the very system we operate in reflects our colonial past. We’re post-colonial but we’re not. We’re still tied into all the international obligations we have. Marijuana is cultural, spiritual and a source of healing but how do we go forward from here?”

Richard Hugh Blackford, a Jamaican artist and author, listed street crime, violence, government ineptitude and corruption as the chief obstacles Jamaican society faces.

“Crime and violence are at crisis levels, but there has been very little engagement by the government,” he asserted. “Fifteen hundred and fifty people has died so far this year from criminal violence. This makes Jamaican one of the most murderous places in the world. Prime Minister Andrew Holness seemed younger and more relatable, but he’s not delivering on public safety.

“We are in a death spiral in Jamaica, but the media is not prepared to carry on a discussion. The police are on the front line of defense of the community against criminals and absorb 70 percent of the national security budget, but there is a lack of accountability of the police force.”

Blackford said in a number of cases incompetent senior police divisional commanders are transferred from post to post where they affect the morale of the officers who serve under them and despite their corrosive effects on the force, the top brass rarely fire them.

Jamaican Attorney Leighton Miller agreed, arguing that inequality and crime are inextricably linked.

“Violence and murder are the key crimes in Jamaica,” said Miller, who lives in Kingston. “There’s a great deal of inequality. Few people are doing well. Those who are (doing well) are generally lighter-skinned and in the upper classes. I think there’s a hollowing out of the middle class, much as we’re seeing in the U.S. Some people are eating one meal a day and others are rummaging through garbage for food.”

“You have food insecurity and people are going to food bank, but you wouldn’t know because Jamaicans are too proud to say. One problem contributing to this situation is that we’re so wedded to colonial ideas. All law enforcement does is police the boundaries of inequality and making the barriers of equality difficult to breach.”

Miller said people’s callousness and indifference concerns him.

“There’s a nihilism and fatalism where people live ‘in the shadow of the volcano’ but are flossing, drinking and living like there’s no tomorrow. We realize that we’ve sold out and we don’t care. We go along with whoever gives us a better deal,” said Miller, who said he leans socialist and advocates getting rid of both political parties but acknowledges not knowing exactly how to do that. “You can see from Facebook posts how hypocritical we are and unconcerned about crime unless it touches them personally. We only pretend to care.”

Interviewees offered sometimes bleak analyses, but they all harbor tremendous hope about Jamaica’s future. Education, all agreed, is the key to a vibrant future, as well as a willingness by the government to invest in industries “that will allow all Jamaicans, at a minimum, equitable access to the fruits of the country.”

“If you create centers of excellence and allow any child anywhere in Jamaica to pursue any hobby, interest or vocation, whether it’s skating, dancing or gymnastics, you will change the face of Jamaica in less than a generation,” Miller said.

Ian Edwards concurred, saying that Jamaica’s outsized cultural, intellectual, artistic and sporting footprint, have laid the groundwork for Jamaica’s future success.

“Jamaicans like poet Claude McKay, who with his poem ‘If We Must Die’ played a seminal role in the Harlem Renaissance, then there is Marcus Garvey … and other distinguished children of Jamaica’s soil,” said Edwards, a English translator-reviewer who has worked at the Organization of American States in Washington, D.C., for 25 years. “Look at the pivotal contributions Jamaica has made. Dudley Thompson, regarded as one of Jamaica’s foremost attorneys of his generation, defended Jomo Kenyatta during a trial where he fought against Britain’s charges of treason.”

“No one can dispute the impact of this spit of rock in the Caribbean. Jamaica gave me not just a sense of pride but a sense of belonging. It is the place that gave me the foundation of life. This is where I was educated and socialized and given the tools necessary for a meaningful life.”

He said Jamaicans must think out the box and fashion indigenous solutions that suit Jamaica and will serve as a means to spur the country’s growth and development.

“Education is crucial to all Jamaicans,” said Edwards who was an Information Attaché for the Jamaican Consulate-General in New York and a member of the Jamaican Foreign Service. “I would love to see all Jamaicans getting educated and derive the benefits. We need to think and craft strategies as to how we can insert ourselves into the global and digital economies. As long as there’s life, there’s hope. Life is about dynamic change at an elemental level. The question is, who can we improve?”

“As the environment changes, we have to be thinking about how we adapt but we can’t compromise our Jamaican values. We need a deliberate and bring together people with a genuine desire to develop and implement practicable solutions. We must never accept the idea or notion that we’ll never be better. And we must never, ever accept the notion that Jamaica can’t be a first world nation.”

BY BARRINGTON M. SALMON -CONTRIBUTING WRITER- 

The succession of killer hurricanes that tore through the Caribbean during 2017 devastated homes and businesses, uprooted people’s existences and exacerbated the fortunes of a region where dependence is the watchword economically, socially and in some cases, politically.

Residents of the mountains around Utuado, Puerto Rico wash their clothes in mountain runoffwater, Oct. 12.

From Dominica, to St. Maarten, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, across the Turks and Caicos and Cuba and from Guadeloupe through Antigua and Barbuda, killer hurricanes, particularly Irma and Maria, cut a wide swathe of destruction, leaving shaken residents to slowly pick up their lives. The long-term implications are far-reaching and will touch all aspects of life in the region.

“I have one foot in hope and the other in trouble,” mused St. Thomas resident Dr. Malik Sekou, a political science professor at the University of the Virgin Islands. “Our society is in a struggle trying to overcome this desolation. What makes these twin hurricanes so devastating is that they were back-to-back in the same region.”

“It was like fighting Muhammad Ali. ‘Here comes the jab, then the overhand right.’ There are socio-psychological implications because so many Virgin Islanders have family in neighboring islands. Irma cut deep into the heart of the Caribbean. It sliced through people’s lives and what Irma didn’t hit, Maria did.”

Dr. Sekou, an author and chairman of the Department of History, Social Science and Political Science, said Caribbean leaders and residents must figure out the best way forward with tourism and agriculture in ruins and the island nations dependent on assistance from the United States, Britain, Holland and other parts of Europe.

The U.S. Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, three months after the double whammy of Irma and Maria, was still reeling from those natural disasters. A dubious federal response from the Trump administration did little to put a substantial dent in allaying the effects of the hurricanes.

Puerto Rico Army Reservists, U.S. Coast Guard Investigative Service Agents, U.S. Coast Guard Tactical Law Enforcement Team members, Puerto Rico Treasury Department Agents, and a Puerto Rico Ports Authority Agents deliver food and water to a family sharing the only room they have left after Hurricane Maria destroyed their home in the mountains around Utuado, Puerto Rico, Oct. 12. Photo: U.S. Air Force photo by Master Sgt. Joshua L. DeMotts

Hurricane Maria hit the island on Sept. 20 and on Nov. 3, more than 70 percent of the island was still without electricity. Telecommunications was spotty or nonexistent with about 52 percent of residents unable to get a cell phone signal and nearly half of Puerto Ricans—about one million people—lack clean running water and have been forced to drink from springs, creeks, rivulets and collected rainwater.

Puerto Rico’s Gov. Ricardo Rosselló and government officials announced a death toll of 62 but there is credible evidence from several sources on the ground in Puerto Rico and investigations by news organizations that the death toll is almost 1,100. The governor has ordered government agencies to reopen their books and initiate a recount and review of all certified deaths that have occurred since Hurricane Maria.

Dr. Danielle Pilar Clealand said things have improved on the ground but residents are still enmeshed in a crisis.

“Where we stand now is that more people are getting power back in San Juan and outside of the city. While the situation has improved, we still have a crisis,” said Dr. Clealand, assistant professor in the Department of Politics & International Relations at Florida International University’s Cuban Research Institute. “The interior is recovering slowly. Most houses there were made of wood and were destroyed. People are living with family, in shelters and elsewhere. Tens of thousands have migrated to Central Florida. This is about migration, housing, running water, disease.”

Dr. Clealand said there are well-founded concerns among Puerto Ricans about the acceleration of gentrification, the effects of crisis capitalism on the future of the island and if and how the island will be able to deal with $74 billion in debt.

Air and Marine Operations agents walk past a home on, September 24, that was completely destroyed by Hurricane Maria in Aguadilla, Puerto, Rico

“All this has the potential to change Puerto Rico,” said Dr. Clealand, whose research focuses on comparative racial politics, racial ideology, nationalism, group consciousness, and racial attitudes throughout the Americas. “Who’s migrating? Are they professionals? Will this be a brain drain? Will people who have left return? Puerto Rico was having problems before the hurricanes but since the hurricanes, no one has been talking about the debt. Debt forgiveness is going to be the key to any recovery in Puerto Rico.”

Dr. Clealand said that the worst hurricane to hit Puerto Rico in more than 80 years has racialized Puerto Ricans.

“Puerto Rico occupied an elite position in the Caribbean and was considered one of the whiter Caribbean islands, but they’re being racialized,” she said. “They’ve been racialized as non-Whites in ways they haven’t before. This is causing them to change their perspective as it relates to who they are. That component is something to watch as people re-envision where they stand in the world.”

There are a number of complaints from residents living in the Caribbean, who are angry, frustrated or incensed. These include corruption of elected officials, crime, indifference and inertia.

Roy Hurley, a criminal attorney living in Barbados, echoes that frustration.

“Election fever is in the air on my sun-kissed rock. But I have developed immunity. I will not be crossing the threshold of any polling station even if they sent a Bentley to fetch me,” he said on a recent Facebook post. “Let me say at the outset that I have been a lifelong supporter of the Democratic Labour Party—the party of the late Errol Walton Barrow.  A party wedded to the guiding principles of democratic socialism. These principles have become too elastic under this DLP administration. They have sacrificed them for short-term opportunism. Right now, my support is in abeyance.”

“I haven’t left the party. They have left me. Maybe one day it will return.  If it does, I’ll be waiting. In the meantime, I’m voluntarily disenfranchised.  I have no choice … .”

When reached in Bridgetown, Barbados, on the morning of Dec. 19, Mr. Hurley expressed a combination of resignation and disgust.

“It’s pretty bleak,” he said. “Our pressing problems in Barbados is a serious problem with drugs, a proliferation of drugs and senseless murders. And the politicians are scratching their heads. Barbados is a little 2-by-4 island. I think people on the island are really fed up with this administration. Early on, people realized that they had been conned.”

St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands Aerial views of the island show destruction caused by Hurricane Maria which touched down on the island on September 19. Photo: Jocelyn Augustino/FEMA

“All we do is reselect and recycle deadbeats. These politicians is all about greed and what people can do for you. The quality of candidates is poor. We need a third party.”

Mr. Hurley said there is a confluence of factors complicating life in Barbados. He said the island is a transshipment point for drugs; the police response is ineffective; there has been an infusion of Indians from Trinidad who have displaced Black Barbadians from various businesses; and the carnage caused by young Black men in regular gangs and drug gangs continues unabated.

“I don’t know what the answer is and the politicians don’t appear to have an answer either,” he lamented. “Young boys are killing each other and in the case of the Indians, we appear to have replaced one oppressor for another. I also want us to transfer economic power from the White elite to Black Bajans. This calls for revolution but Bajans are passive. They accept a lot crap. People mumble but do nothing.”

Source: Hurricanes reshape Caribbean, further expose fault lines