The government would be wise to tread carefully in its push for “visa free” travel to various developed countries. Guyana is no Dubai and for a large majority of its population it is still a place of economic drudgery, violence and injustice that many would be happy to leave.
The reality is that the demand for “visa free” travel is coming from the rapidly prosperous entrepreneurial class who are benefiting from the frenzied activity in the oil and tangential sectors and just want somewhere new to vacation. The United Kingdom’s surprise lifting of visa requirements was hailed as a victory for Guyana and indeed it represented a moment of pride for a country which for decades suffered discrimination from its former colonial ruler when it came to visa requirements. It also coincides with closer economic ties with the UK including a highly lucrative oil marketing contract awarded to Britain’s second largest corporation, BP.
We now learn that Canada is “looking at” what might mean Guyana becoming part of their Electronic Travel Authorization (ETA) system that still requires filling out a form and having it approved prior to travel. It’s just that you don’t need to fill out a long form and wait several months. As for a media report of talks related to Italy scrapping visa requirements, it is not clear how this would harmonise with the Schengen Zone mechanism which allows a visitor once landing in a European country to then cross borders within Europe without any checks. As such it requires consent from all Schengen countries so would be more complicated diplomatically. However, a first step would be to have a desk here that could accept applications rather than the expensive and lengthy process of going to Suriname and waiting for your passport to be returned.
But one must ask what are the benefits and dangers of such ease of travel for Guyana itself? The benefits are almost exclusively to well-off travellers/businessmen who would no longer have to go through the expense and inconvenience of applications. The risk would be the possibility of more migration from a country that can ill afford it.
This risk should also be assessed through the lens of the history and extent of migration from Guyana. US government records show the numbers of Guyanese gaining legal permanent status over the decades -1980-1989: 85,885; 1990-1999: 74,407; 2000 to 2009: 70,373; 2010 to 2019: 53,921. This is a total of 284,587 people over 40 years and does not include illegal “backtrack” migration to the US, nor migration to Canada, the UK, Caricom states and Venezuela. It is staggering and certainly the main factor and symptom behind, and of, Guyana’s economic, social and cultural decline since independence.
Now just because the President says almost every day that Guyana will be transformed and there will be opportunities for all Guyanese it does not mean the migration faucet will suddenly be turned off. Migration is a complex phenomenon involving emotions, long held attitudes and, very importantly for many Guyanese, family ties. There is already a long tail of family sponsorship to the United States that will not diminish. It may also explain why quite a few young people – with one foot in Guyana, the other stateside – are not interested in working.
In the case of America, the Department of Home-land Security’s 2020 Entry/Exit Overstay Report enumerates that of 53,681 expected departures, suspected in country overstays for Guyanese were 3054 or around 5%. We do not know how many more would overstay if only an ESTA (Electronic System for Travel Application) was required – 10,000? 15,000? Whatever the figure for Guyana it would be far more impactful given our small size.
With the eternal optimism of the Ali administration, the impression might be that Guyanese would think twice about migrating whether legally or illegally. But at the heart of this fallacy is that this promised prosperity for all and the other improved services are many years in the future and people have children to raise, illnesses to treat, careers to pursue now – not ten years from now.
Putting aside those factors for a moment, this newspaper’s series, “How the cost of living is hitting people” delivers unfiltered, unbiased accounts of how the working poor are faring. This week it was at the Saturday evening market at Hydronie, East Bank Essequibo. Here’s what a vendor, Shanti said in her own words: “I went to Leonora market this morning to sell and I have a lot of produce left back. So I had to come here to sell. It is really rough… market really rough, especially now that it is coming on to year end and closer to the Christmas holiday. I used to have enough money from my sales to pay my bills and run the house, but now I can’t make it. The cost of living get high, high, everything raise up.”
While this inflation may be transitory, one should also look at the longer term, larger picture. Even with the recent quibbling by the finance minister that a World Bank report which had stated that almost half of Guyanese were living off less than US$5.50 per day referred to 2019, does he really think with Covid-19 and post-Covid inflation that poor people’s real incomes have improved that much? Will he also be honest with himself and acknowledge that he was minister from 2006 to 2015 so must bear some responsibility?
For the purposes of this editorial it doesn’t matter who is to blame: a vast majority of Guyanese would jump at an opportunity to live overseas. Take one Essequibo family who recently went to New York on a tourist visa: both got jobs immediately earning a combined US$1000 per week and their children are already enrolled in schools that are miles ahead in standards than the one they were in here.
This leads us on to the many other factors why people migrate. The statistics indicate that more women than men make the move. It is not hard to see why. Who would put up with domestic abuse in the home and the disrespect and sexual harassment, even the threat of rape, on the streets. Many women in the diaspora must have felt a feeling of complete liberation upon arriving overseas.
Getting a good education for one’s children, looking after your family’s health, having opportunities in your career and owning a proper house – not one of those low income bungalows – are all attainable in developed countries.
As for violence many of us would have been horrified to read of the murders of two elderly women allegedly by their own relatives in the space of a week.
The danger here is the administration might be believing its own messaging on the prospects for its citizens. Short term diplomatic wins must be considered in the context of historical and persistent migration patterns and a future for a country that will more than ever need to keep every citizen at home.
