Over 7000 Jamaican professionals have emigrated to North America since 2008!
An astounding amount of Jamaicans who worked in professional fields on the island have left to live in North America since 2008.
According to a report by the Observer, the number of professionals opting to leave total over 1,100 each year since 2008 when the when the global financial crisis started.
It’s somewhat reassuring to know that not all professionals in Jamaica have the desire to flee for “greener pastures”.
Here is what Dennis Chung – President of the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica said in the same report:
“I have a love for Jamaica [and] I think Jamaica is the best place in the world to live” .”Where else in the world you can go and the society is so warm? Where else in the world you can go in your back yard and pick some Julie mangoes and ackee?”
Chung argues that there are only a few things wrong with Jamaica and he would rather stay here and help to remedy them.
“I would rather stay in my country and fix my country rather than stay outside and help to criticise it,” he said. “Everything is not just about having a lot of money, quality of life is a lot more important than that.
“People take simple things for granted, like the fact that you can walk down the road and see Usain Bolt or pay $1,000 and hear all the vintage artiste sing, when people aborad have to pay up to US$100 to see three of them perform.”
In accounting for the experiences of some of his colleagues who left for the North, the PSOJ CEO said, “One or two of them have done well, but for the most part a lot of them are not really living the life that they thought they would be living (in Jamaica).”
Chung said that “people have called me and said that they are trying to come back to Jamaica and get a job because it is so difficult up there”.
He reckons that the transition is far from a ‘bed of roses’ because a lot of people don’t have the support base that they would have back home.
“Had some of them been back in Jamaica where they have a solid base and work smart, not hard, they could have actually made it,” .
He believes that the level of brain drain is largely resultant of the lack of transformative leadership in Jamaica, the issue of crime and the cumbersome and restrictive effect of the Jamaican bureaucracy.
We want to know your views. If given the opportunity – would you hesitate to move to “greener pastures”? Let us know in the comments.
Source: jamaicaobserver.com
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I like the fact that you are patriotic, but an awful lot of your claims are utter bullshit. People know better when they experience it. What people say is one thing, but how people act is more telling and sincere than anything they say. The mere fact that the majority of Jamaicans that leave for birth America or Europe don’t return but for visiting, tells a story that I’m not willing to ignore in favor if what you out they say. Nobody chooses what they consider to be worse, over better. It’s as plain and simple as that
Mr Chung, it is money that is going to give you quality of life. Money makes the mare gallop. You can talk because you can afford an affluent lifestyle in Jamaica. Who feels it knows it and if people cannot make life here it’s only fair for them to try elsewhere. If your own country fails you then the option is to try elsewhere. Jamaica seem to be a hopeless place right now because it’s only the politicians who are able to “live”. Their rum bar allowance is more than my salary and that of others. I am ready to… Read more »
So disturbed, don’t even want to comment. Poor you Mr chung
I agree with Mr Chung…here is why, “Success” and “a better way of life” is not the same with everyone! Not many people leave Jamaica and become what they had fantasize about in accomplishing! So the many people that leave Jamaica, if success to them means owning a home and having a 9 to 5 job, yet you are seen as an alien or being racially targeted by the natives of that country you all migrated to…..then whats the purpose of that said “Success” ? You have all the trappings of a “Good” life yet you cannot venture in certain… Read more »
I like the fact that you are patriotic, but an awful lot of your claims are utter bullshit. People know better when they experience it. What people say is one thing, but how people act is more telling and sincere than anything they say. The mere fact that the majority of Jamaicans that leave for birth America or Europe don’t return but for visiting, tells a story that I’m not willing to ignore in favor if what you out they say. Nobody chooses what they consider to be worse, over better. It’s as plain and simple as that
Mr Chung, it is money that is going to give you quality of life. Money makes the mare gallop. You can talk because you can afford an affluent lifestyle in Jamaica. Who feels it knows it and if people cannot make life here it’s only fair for them to try elsewhere. If your own country fails you then the option is to try elsewhere. Jamaica seem to be a hopeless place right now because it’s only the politicians who are able to “live”. Their rum bar allowance is more than my salary and that of others. I am ready to… Read more »
So disturbed, don’t even want to comment. Poor you Mr chung
I agree with Mr Chung…here is why, “Success” and “a better way of life” is not the same with everyone! Not many people leave Jamaica and become what they had fantasize about in accomplishing! So the many people that leave Jamaica, if success to them means owning a home and having a 9 to 5 job, yet you are seen as an alien or being racially targeted by the natives of that country you all migrated to…..then whats the purpose of that said “Success” ? You have all the trappings of a “Good” life yet you cannot venture in certain… Read more »