Norman Grindley/ Deputy Chief Photographer
Dahlia Walker-Huntington, an adviser from the Jamaican diaspora, United States.
Leonardo Blair, Enterprise Reporter
Advisory members of the Jamaican diaspora group which was launched last year have vowed to take to task unfair deportation practices in Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States where a large contingent of the diaspora has settled. Representatives from Canada have also commissioned studies on the issue in that country and are expected to make their findings known by year's end.
"We have our concerns," said Sharon Ffolkes Abrahams, vice-president of the Jamaican Diaspora Canada Foundation. "We have noticed that about 40 per cent of all deportations (in Canada) are Jamaicans. We want to find out whether it is a systemic problem. We want to look at the impact on the families. It has never been approached by Jamaicans as a body," she said. There are approximately 300,000 Jamaicans living in Canada.
Ms. Abrahams explained that there is now serious concern over the number of Jamaicans who are being forced to abandon their families in Canada because of current deportation practices. "We think it is highly unfair for someone to have spent his or her whole life in a country (to be forced to leave in that way). We have actually studied the issue and its effect on Canada and we hope to take this issue to the highest level, even to the United Nations," she said.
In recent years, the issue of deportees and their link to crime has
been a major concern among local law enforcement agencies. How-ever, according to the group, it is time the picture from the other end of the spectrum is taken into account.
Paulette Simpson, chief U.K., representative on the advisory board, explained that immigration concerns, including that of deportation and access to the U.K., remain a vexing problem for the Jamaican diaspora. Addressing recent reports regarding single Jamaican men being invariably denied U.K. visas, Simpson explained that "It is not a stated policy but it is strongly believed that it is skewed in that way."
'immigration backlash'
Dahlia Walker-Huntington, a United States adviser who is also a certified family law and court mediator in Hollywood, Florida, explained that since 9/11 Jamaicans have been experiencing "immigration backlash." She pointed out that her group will be lobbying for a serious examination of the current deportation policy in that country where immigrants, regardless of their status, can be deported if officials there "have reason to believe," that they are even remotely connected to a criminal proceeding. "Who are the deportees? What happens to them? we know that not every Jamaican sent home is a criminal," said Walker-Huntington.
The current lobby comes after a heated debate sparked by a U.S. embassy-commissioned study conducted by University of the West Indies Professor Bernard Headley. The study found that most Jamaicans sent home after committing crimes in the United States are non-violent offenders who are likely to have little impact on the country's crime problem. It goes against common proclamations by local law enforcement authorities that most deportees are hardened criminals who are contributing to violent crime on the island.
Deported
The study analysed statistics provided by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on nearly three quarters of the 12,036 Jamaicans deported from the United States between 1997 and 2003.
Last June, Prime Minister P.J. Patterson suggested that criminal deportees were hurting crime-fighting efforts and accused other nations of 'trying to get rid of their problem' by returning thousands of them every year.
His comments came after Britain said it would send home hundreds of Jamaicans behind bars there to cut costs and ease overcrowding.
The numbers of Jamaican criminals sent home from the United States has risen sharply since a 1996 U.S. law came into force, mandating that every non-citizen sentenced to a year or more in prison be subject to deportation. Deportable crimes range from murder to petty theft.
An Associated Press investigation conducted in 2003 found that one out of every 106 males over the age of 15 in Jamaica is a criminal deportee from the United States.
The Jamaican Diaspora committee evolved out of a meeting held at the Jamaica Conference Centre in Kingston last June. It was organised by the Jamaican Government and several private sector organisations in a bid to update overseas Jamaicans on national development. The board of advisors are expected to advise the government of Jamaica on issues concerning Jamaicans living overseas as well as assisting overseas Jamaicans to organise themselves to impact policy at home and abroad.
