Exporting Jamaican professionals
published: Wednesday | January 22, 2003
THE EDITOR, Sir:
INDEED, HEAVEN help a poor man trying to argue with a bank president! Aubyn Hill, Managing Director of NCB Jamaica Limited, in his recent speech to the Trade Board Limited, certainly argues well for the export of Jamaican professionals, such as are apparently needed in First World countries today. He makes no mention, however, of the reasons behind those needs, a shortcoming typical of modern financiers, as the US has seen all too clearly in its recent wave of scandals.
Today, wealthy First World nations futilely continue attempting to divest themselves of their responsibility to, and their dependence upon, the poor and underprivileged classes. To facilitate this divestiture, "buffer" classes (as they might well be called) are most useful. These are often middle-income professionals whose goals, if not the opportunity for the attainment of wealth, are at least long-range stability and financial security. When not enough buffers are available, or when their demands are too imposing, then "buffer busting," by importing competition for example, is most effective.
What of Jamaica's needs? Have remittances or backwards-flowing educational efforts ever been that effective on the island? I think not. Moreover, should Third World Countries, especially ones that utilise foreign service labour such as the US Peace Corps, be encouraging its few, competent professionals to migrate away? Or, is the apparent opportunity just another form of protection for the established and privileged classes of Jamaica itself?
Had Jamaica's ancestral Africans been entreated to leave, rather than stolen from their homelands by the promise of a better life in a new world, one must wonder if the same arguments would have been used as those being used today to recruit Jamaica's skilled labour?
Some might think it impossible for a poor man to put up a good argument with a banking executive, but with a good education resulting from the efforts of a qualified and caring professional, one who didn't migrate there is always hope that truth, not power alone, will win out.
