Leverage diaspora links in US, advocates urge Jamaican Gov’t
THE ANDREW Holness administration is being urged to tap diaspora linkages in the political framework of the United States to achieve developmental goals as President-elect Joseph Biden prepares to take office in January 2021.
That call has been made by lobbyists among the Jamaican diaspora in the US.
Head of the Queens-based Caribbean Immigration Services, Irwine Clare, said that CARICOM leaders will have to work together to forge cohesive goals for the region‘s development.
“This is a good opportunity for us. The situation presents an opportunity that bodes well for us,” he said during a Gleaner Editors’ Forum last Thursday.
Pointing out that expatriates
may have influence through US Congresswoman Yvette Clarke and other elected leaders who can lobby Vice-president-elect Kamala Harris, who has Jamaican ancestry, Clare is urging Caribbean leaders to take advantage of the opportunities at this critical juncture as the turbulent Donald Trump era comes to a close.
“This is the moment. CARICOM must work as a whole without cherry-picking,” Clare told journalists.
Dr Basil Wilson, former professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan, said that like the rest of the Caribbean, the Holness administration must have a clear vision of the economic goals it wants to achieve working with the new administration.
“We need to have specific goals. It must go beyond just the diaspora. But regional governments need to work through the framework that exists to access and achieve defined goals,” he said.
POSITION AS SUPPLY CHAIN
Wilson said that while the region is hungry for foreign direct investment, it should also position itself as a supply chain to the United States market.
“It is, therefore, important to have a plan in place, must start to take advantage of the framework that we have in place in the diaspora to achieve these (developmental) goals,”said Wilson.
Ambassador Curtis Ward, former ambassador to the United Nations, said that the diaspora must develop pillars in conjunction with the
governments of the region.
“We must have policies that they can articulate to the diaspora that we can bring to the political framework,” he said.
Ward said that it is important that Caribbean envoys speak in unison.
Patrick Beckford, former Northeast Diaspora Advisory Board member and Democratic strategist, said that until Jamaican immigrants understand the breadth of their leverage, the goals of the region will not be fulfilled.
“Our governments must realise that they don’t have to run the diaspora, but rather to work through the diaspora to achieve the economic goals of the country,” said Beckford.
He bemoaned the lack of unity within CARICOM in working with US administrations to tap linkages and frameworks.
The sense of fracture within the regional bloc emerged more clearly during the Trump administration, which convened a controversial summit with select Caribbean leaders in March 2019 – a move that drew criticism from then CARICOM Chairman Mia Mottley.
That policy ran counter to Washington’s strategy of engaging the umbrella group and was evidence of Trump’s rejection of diplomatic orthodoxy.
Among those scolded by Caribbean statesman P.J. Patterson were Andrew Holness, Jamaica’s current prime minister; St Lucia’s Allen Chastanet; The Bahamas’ Hubert Minnis; Haiti’s Jovenel Moise, and Danilo Medina, whose Dominican Republic is part of the CARIFORUM lobby.