THE EDITOR, Sir:I AM sure that all those who are clamouring for our brothers and sister deportees not to be received seem not to recall that our first national hero the Honourable Marcus Mosiah Ggarvey was deported from the United States in 1927 on order of the then President of the United States Calvin Coolidge after serving a portion of his five-year sentence on concocted betrayal charges that he used United States mail to defraud investors.
On Mr Garvey's deportation a leading newspaper then had a headline that screamed to the effect that it is a pity we have to welcome a man like this to our shores. Things have not changed much and the hypocrites and parasites are still in our midst. Leaders have been heard to say how large and important the remittance business is to national economic stability. They have also been heard to say in the past that the drug business was in part responsible for economic and social stability.
Not all deportees have run afoul of the law in a real hard-core criminal way, some were just trying to make a decent living to make their lives and the lives of their loved ones here in Jamaica better and in doing so were contributing to the national economic and stability. To put it simply, for many of them their papers were not right.
We as a people should recognise the importance of striving to regain our place in the world as a hard working law-abiding people even more so when we go abroad.
To all of our people welcome home deportees and all. It could have been anyone of us, once you travel overseas you are at risk of being a deportee.
I am, etc.,
MICHAEL SPENCE
micspen2@hotmail.com
P.O. 630, Kingston 6
