Tweet
Brain drain, my foot! Migration saved us!
Franklin Johnston
Friday, May 13, 2011
MINISTER Baugh decries migration while Bruce announces 10,000 job losses and business closures. A Cabinet of contradictions? What are the jobless to do? Ken is a decent man - respect! But his call for developed nations to provide funds for training professionals makes no sense. We don't need to train more. We need to train fewer and retain them. From 1990-2009 we trained many and 55,000 of them migrated. Why? They had no jobs. Others hired them and they remit millions. From 1971-2009, among the one million non-professionals we exported were criminals and illiterates. Ken, will you compensate the UK or US for taking their burden off our budget? They send money so Jamaica can save billions on poor relief and use the FX.
My friends from Halls Delight who migrated are well off. They have jobs, degrees; the family here gets money and robot taxi to run up the hill. Those who did not go just scratch the soil and can't afford a JPS meter - go figure! Migration helped them and JA. The greatest Jewish brains are abroad, leading lights in many nations, yet Israel asks for no compensation. Let's do the same! Why shake down developed countries?
To get $5 million a head? Trus' me, a study will show we owe them money. Is this human trafficking? If the 55,000 were still here labour rates would fall and teachers, nurses would be paid peanuts. Will Minister Spencer and Minister Holness say how many doctors, nurses, teachers they will employ now? So why is Bruce firing 10k? Want to stop brain drain? Create jobs. Brain drain is our unemployed graduates in survival mode. Migration saved them and JA. Those in the diaspora are our accidental heroes! They have done there what they could not do here. Big up!
Participants at a diaspora conference in Kingston. (Observer file photo)
Why do we migrate? Do we jump, are we pulled or pushed? Why did your father, mother leave you alone to go to a cold, strange land? Crazy? No. For a better life. Consider this: they had no job, no future; were fearful, faced threats; someone they know was robbed, raped, murdered, the society was stifling them, so they sacrificed and left. Minister Ken, migration is a symptom of Cabinet failure to build prosperity. So why do we have surplus graduates? If we reform state-funded universities; if we leave student loans to loan experts and if loans are given to all students - state subsidised, using banks - for demand-driven degrees, we would have the professionals we need and no surplus to drain! Check these points:
First, Cabinet has no projections of professional jobs to 2020 to guide the tertiary system on intake and output. So universities overproduce, graduates can't get jobs, salaries are pressed, older graduates despair and migrate! Second, campuses are predatory and admit students, whether a job is available or not - irresponsible! Some say their graduates get jobs.
How come? Simple: bosses fire the senior and employ new ones to cut salary costs; the know-how migrates - we lose! Third, students are also to blame as most study easy courses, not what the market needs, and are not employable. Many at age 37 are living with parents. Cabinets and universities feed migration as they graduate more than the economy can absorb. Do you know their enrolment increases even as our economy declines? Don't laugh. To produce more in a glut is idiocy. Look in the mirror, Minister Holness.
After the war our northern friends needed workers and we migrated. We were the white man's burden; we understood English even if we did not speak it. That's OK, our job was to take, not give orders. We produced graduates in the 60s and our surplus migrated to UK health and education services. Why not? They funded UWI! In the 70s rich people feared communism and migrated. But most could not survive in US meritocracy where class or family name has no traction and high-brown or beige is black! Many returned crestfallen. By the 80s graduates outstripped our economy's needs but as the UK was booming they took our surplus. The UK is now in crisis and cuts university funding. We too are in crisis but Cabinet has not turned off our degree factories. Minister Ken, funding for university capacity is not the shot! Minister Holness should rationalise state-funded universities. Too many graduates chasing too few jobs.
When the coop gets crowded the fowls begin to peck each other and become cannibals - all suffer. Migration saved us up to now, but doors are closing and we may have bloody revolution unless we can head it off by voting in new people with vision and executive skills to build our own prosperity come 2012!
Minister Ken opens a can of worms without a Red Stripe to wash it down. Did he survey our "brain-drained" abroad? Are they poor, fearful, unhappy? Cash for brain drain is a game politicians play when ideas run out. Is the diaspora OK with being sold (in absentia) to the white man - again? By our own black people - again? I can't hear you. Cabinet must publish the economic and social balance sheet of migration so we see the net benefit or loss. We gained more from migration than the US or UK - families at home and the nation - money, culture, acclaim, insight, FX. If those in the diaspora remit seven per cent of income, it means they earn US$50 - 70 billion - more than our budget. They could not do this here. The human capital gains are also massive. We exported crude lumps of clay; these were shaped by exposure, experience into incisive, creative tools - politicians, opera singers, academics, train drivers, welders all with a sense of social justice. Minister Baugh is on a slippery slope. If it backfires and results in curtailment of our travel options, remember that he started it! Put a price tag on our professional backs and we are once more in the moral maze. African slavers captured, warehoused and traded our ancestors. Will Cabinet take orders for our warm, professional bodies? Will they offset our one million non-professional migrants? Give the US a bulk price? In Ken's plan, will politicians decide who can or can't migrate, send off cronies and hold back others? Why not go into new markets - a sales office in Libya - as their black African semi-slaves are leaving? We will go, we are used to fighting. Will you sell our graduates? Just graduate farm-work! OK. Put us on eBay? With a doctorate, what is my list price? My heart bleeds! We have learnt nothing from history. Stay conscious, my friend!
Dr Franklin Johnston is an international project manager with Teape-Johnston Consultants currently on asssignment in the UK.
franklinjohnston@hotmail.com
Franklin Johnston
Friday, May 13, 2011
MINISTER Baugh decries migration while Bruce announces 10,000 job losses and business closures. A Cabinet of contradictions? What are the jobless to do? Ken is a decent man - respect! But his call for developed nations to provide funds for training professionals makes no sense. We don't need to train more. We need to train fewer and retain them. From 1990-2009 we trained many and 55,000 of them migrated. Why? They had no jobs. Others hired them and they remit millions. From 1971-2009, among the one million non-professionals we exported were criminals and illiterates. Ken, will you compensate the UK or US for taking their burden off our budget? They send money so Jamaica can save billions on poor relief and use the FX.
My friends from Halls Delight who migrated are well off. They have jobs, degrees; the family here gets money and robot taxi to run up the hill. Those who did not go just scratch the soil and can't afford a JPS meter - go figure! Migration helped them and JA. The greatest Jewish brains are abroad, leading lights in many nations, yet Israel asks for no compensation. Let's do the same! Why shake down developed countries?
To get $5 million a head? Trus' me, a study will show we owe them money. Is this human trafficking? If the 55,000 were still here labour rates would fall and teachers, nurses would be paid peanuts. Will Minister Spencer and Minister Holness say how many doctors, nurses, teachers they will employ now? So why is Bruce firing 10k? Want to stop brain drain? Create jobs. Brain drain is our unemployed graduates in survival mode. Migration saved them and JA. Those in the diaspora are our accidental heroes! They have done there what they could not do here. Big up!
Participants at a diaspora conference in Kingston. (Observer file photo)
Why do we migrate? Do we jump, are we pulled or pushed? Why did your father, mother leave you alone to go to a cold, strange land? Crazy? No. For a better life. Consider this: they had no job, no future; were fearful, faced threats; someone they know was robbed, raped, murdered, the society was stifling them, so they sacrificed and left. Minister Ken, migration is a symptom of Cabinet failure to build prosperity. So why do we have surplus graduates? If we reform state-funded universities; if we leave student loans to loan experts and if loans are given to all students - state subsidised, using banks - for demand-driven degrees, we would have the professionals we need and no surplus to drain! Check these points:
First, Cabinet has no projections of professional jobs to 2020 to guide the tertiary system on intake and output. So universities overproduce, graduates can't get jobs, salaries are pressed, older graduates despair and migrate! Second, campuses are predatory and admit students, whether a job is available or not - irresponsible! Some say their graduates get jobs.
How come? Simple: bosses fire the senior and employ new ones to cut salary costs; the know-how migrates - we lose! Third, students are also to blame as most study easy courses, not what the market needs, and are not employable. Many at age 37 are living with parents. Cabinets and universities feed migration as they graduate more than the economy can absorb. Do you know their enrolment increases even as our economy declines? Don't laugh. To produce more in a glut is idiocy. Look in the mirror, Minister Holness.
After the war our northern friends needed workers and we migrated. We were the white man's burden; we understood English even if we did not speak it. That's OK, our job was to take, not give orders. We produced graduates in the 60s and our surplus migrated to UK health and education services. Why not? They funded UWI! In the 70s rich people feared communism and migrated. But most could not survive in US meritocracy where class or family name has no traction and high-brown or beige is black! Many returned crestfallen. By the 80s graduates outstripped our economy's needs but as the UK was booming they took our surplus. The UK is now in crisis and cuts university funding. We too are in crisis but Cabinet has not turned off our degree factories. Minister Ken, funding for university capacity is not the shot! Minister Holness should rationalise state-funded universities. Too many graduates chasing too few jobs.
When the coop gets crowded the fowls begin to peck each other and become cannibals - all suffer. Migration saved us up to now, but doors are closing and we may have bloody revolution unless we can head it off by voting in new people with vision and executive skills to build our own prosperity come 2012!
Minister Ken opens a can of worms without a Red Stripe to wash it down. Did he survey our "brain-drained" abroad? Are they poor, fearful, unhappy? Cash for brain drain is a game politicians play when ideas run out. Is the diaspora OK with being sold (in absentia) to the white man - again? By our own black people - again? I can't hear you. Cabinet must publish the economic and social balance sheet of migration so we see the net benefit or loss. We gained more from migration than the US or UK - families at home and the nation - money, culture, acclaim, insight, FX. If those in the diaspora remit seven per cent of income, it means they earn US$50 - 70 billion - more than our budget. They could not do this here. The human capital gains are also massive. We exported crude lumps of clay; these were shaped by exposure, experience into incisive, creative tools - politicians, opera singers, academics, train drivers, welders all with a sense of social justice. Minister Baugh is on a slippery slope. If it backfires and results in curtailment of our travel options, remember that he started it! Put a price tag on our professional backs and we are once more in the moral maze. African slavers captured, warehoused and traded our ancestors. Will Cabinet take orders for our warm, professional bodies? Will they offset our one million non-professional migrants? Give the US a bulk price? In Ken's plan, will politicians decide who can or can't migrate, send off cronies and hold back others? Why not go into new markets - a sales office in Libya - as their black African semi-slaves are leaving? We will go, we are used to fighting. Will you sell our graduates? Just graduate farm-work! OK. Put us on eBay? With a doctorate, what is my list price? My heart bleeds! We have learnt nothing from history. Stay conscious, my friend!
Dr Franklin Johnston is an international project manager with Teape-Johnston Consultants currently on asssignment in the UK.
franklinjohnston@hotmail.com
Comment