Jamaica frets over slowdown in returning islanders

MANDEVILLE, Jamaica (AP) — In this affluent town in Jamaica's cool, mountainous interior, Jasmine Pottinger has realized the dream that kept her going while dealing with racism, culture shock and other challenges during almost four decades of working in drizzly London, a city where she never felt entirely accepted.

The 73-year-old retired nurse and her husband, Earl, have retired to the Jamaican parish of her birth. Their pensions and hard-earned savings from Britain afford them a handsomely decorated house with a big balcony and spacious patio looking out on a terraced garden buzzing with hummingbirds and exploding with red and orange flowers that bloom year round.

"In London, we could never afford all this," she says as friends enjoy freshly baked banana bread and strong Jamaican coffee served by a domestic helper. "Jamaica is certainly not cheap, but it does offer us a quality of life we enjoy. Plus, we are Jamaican and this is our country. Although I lived in England for 36 years, coming home was always my intention."

For years, that was the goal of nearly all Jamaicans who left seeking work because of the poor wages and scarcity of opportunity at home. They returned at retirement to take advantage of the sunny Caribbean island's lower costs and comfortable climate — and at the same time they provide a significant source of foreign currency for the economy.

But to the dismay of the government, fewer and fewer Jamaicans are coming back from London, New York, Toronto and other cities that drew them away as young adults. Over the last 20 years, the annual number of "returning nationals" has dropped by more than half — down to slightly more than 1,000 in 2011, the most recent year for which official figures are available.

Some overseas Jamaicans are stuck in devalued homes because of the world economic crunch and find their Caribbean paradise is out of reach financially. Others are choosing to live in retirement communities in places like Florida that offer strong personal care services. Often they are put off by Jamaica's struggle with high rates of crime that were unimaginable when they left just as the island was shedding its status as a colonial outpost of Britain a half century ago.

Caribbean islands have long suffered from a "brain drain" that has seen professionals and skilled workers head off to jobs in the U.S., Europe and Canada. Leaders of small islands like Grenada and St. Lucia have lately begun wooing nationals abroad and encouraging them to assist with developing their struggling homelands, but much more populous Jamaica has the most focused effort to forge relationships with its overseas citizens.

About 3 million Jamaicans live abroad, more than the 2.7 million who are here. The $2 billion they send home each year is a major source of investment and wealth for this poor island, accounting for more than 13 percent of its GDP. The Bank of Jamaica says retirees who move back home are a key factor, estimating that their pensions provide 15 percent of the inflow of foreign currency.

Government officials are working to entice more nationals to come home — or at least to invest in Jamaica. A four-day Jamaica Diaspora Conference in mid-June hopes to attract hundreds of representatives of Jamaican overseas communities in the U.S., Britain, Canada and elsewhere in the Caribbean to discuss trade and investment.

The private sector also touts the need for more Jamaicans to move back. Developer Stafford Earle, who has just completed a subdivision selling primarily to Jamaicans with foreign pension checks, says returnees are a boost for the local economy along the scenic coast of Westmoreland parish where he builds.

"The overall long-term financial input will be as great as that of sugar and tourism," Earle said.

Irwine Clare, managing director of the New York-based advocacy group Caribbean Immigrant Services, believes crime is the biggest problem keeping Jamaicans from resettling on the island.

"We recognize the impact of what crime and violence has done to our beloved nation. It is cause for major concern. But we are very much a God-fearing people so we never give up in spite of all the odds that are against us," Clare said in a telephone interview. "It is also for us in the diaspora to help find a solution."

Migration back home is a sensitive subject for many overseas Jamaicans who are afraid to burn bridges by discussing why they are reluctant to move back.

Stephen Batchelor, an 89-year-old returnee to gang-steeped Spanish Town, said former neighbors in the British city of Birmingham told him they are afraid to come back. They believe they will be targeted by criminals in Jamaica, where nearly everyone lives behind iron burglar bars installed on windows and doors.

"It seems to me that the interest in returning home has mostly faded," Batchelor said, standing by his bungalow's front gate where last year two thieves robbed him of his monthly pension packet.

The good news for Jamaica is that homicides and other major crimes have been going down since 2010, when an anti-gang crackdown got started. For 2012, police reported 1,087 homicides, the lowest number in nine years. National Security Minister Peter Bunting says the island aims to reduce crime to "First World levels" by 2017, when he hopes to have a maximum of just 321 killings.

For now, Jamaica still has an eye-popping violent crime rate. When Chicago, with roughly the same population as Jamaica, chalked up 506 homicides last year, the bloodshed put the city at the center of the U.S. debate over guns. Jamaica's has had 1,000-plus killings every year since 2004.

Perhaps nowhere is there more at stake than in Mandeville, where the rolling hills are dotted with stately homes owned by returned Jamaicans, including mansions with secret gardens and ornate fountains.

On a recent morning, the Pottingers met with other former British residents who have formed an association for companionship and safety. They reminisced about the long-ago challenges that confronted them when they first went to the "Mother Country" of England some 50 years ago.

But when the conversation turned to their retirement in Jamaica, member David Fyffe's face turned sour. Having come back to his homeland, he still has to deal with alienation and hostility — this time from envious countrymen who look upon him as a moneyed foreigner ripe for exploitation.

"The homes of returning residents are robbed when they go to church, robbed when they go on vacation. There are strong attempts to cheat and defraud. Yes, there has been a decline in Jamaica and returning residents can be a target," said Fyffe, nearly 70, who worked on the British railways for years.

The group of senior citizens rattled off a litany of safety measures large and small: Always keep your car windows up in traffic. Only deal with police officers you trust. Install closed-circuit television monitoring. Don't dawdle at your front gate. Nearly ripe bananas and plantains must be concealed from street view or they'll be stolen.

Yet, they say Jamaica is still a good place to live. Many of them enjoy support networks of family and friends and love being back on the island where they grew up, no matter how much it's changed.

Pottinger said she never had any intention of staying overseas.

"None of us went to England and thought they would stay for any longer than five years. We thought the place was paved with gold — you'd go and get our money and you'd come back home," she said, grinning at the memory.

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David McFadden on Twitter: http://twitter/com/dmcfadd

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Falkland Islanders vote with an eye on Argentina

STANLEY, Falkland Islands (AP) — Britain is hoping this weekend's referendum on the political status of the Falkland Islands will push the United States and other neutral governments off the fence in its territorial dispute with Argentina over the remote South Atlantic archipelago.

The local Falkland Islands Government has mobilized a major effort to get as many of its 1,650 registered voters as possible to cast their secret ballots Sunday and Monday, preparing to send off-road vehicles, boats and seaplanes to remote sheep farms across the lightly populated islands.

Elections observers from Canada, Mexico, the U.S., Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile and New Zealand also will be watching as islanders answer a simple yes-or-no question: "Do you wish the Falkland Islands to retain their current political status as an Overseas Territory of the United Kingdom?"

Islanders expect the answer to be overwhelmingly in favor of British governance and protection, a result they hope will put their own self-determination at the center of any debate about their future in the face of Argentine claims to the islands. Britain wants the U.S. in particular to recognize the islanders' rights, but Secretary of State John Kerry refused to budge during his recent visit to London.

"I'm not going to comment, nor is the president, on a referendum that has yet to take place," Kerry said, punting the question until after the results are announced Monday night. "Our position on the Falklands has not changed. The United States recognizes de facto U.K. administration of the islands, but takes no position on the question of the parties' sovereignty claims."

"Sovereignty" is a term that focuses on a territory more than its people, and it's the word Argentina often invokes while asserting its claim to the islands. Late Friday, Argentina's foreign ministry repeated its assertion that the islanders are an "implanted" people and that U.N. resolutions require Britain to resolve the dispute bilaterally, "taking into account the 'interests' (not the 'desires') of the inhabitants of the islands."

Britain prefers to refer to "self-determination," which focuses more on the people than the land they live on.

The U.S. strongly endorsed self-determination for the people of South Sudan ahead of their 2011 referendum, which showed 99 percent wanted independence from their northern neighbor. President Barack Obama said during the Arab Spring uprisings that "the United States of America welcomes change that advances self-determination" for people in Egypt and Tunisia. The Palestinians and the Puerto Ricans have gained similar support for self-determination rights, and Obama even came out in favor of a UN declaration supporting self-determination for Native Americans.

The Obama administration also has expressed support for letting Puerto Ricans, who are U.S. citizens, determine their territory's relationship to the U.S., though the result of a referendum on the question last year was ambiguous.

But when it comes to the Falklands, which Argentines claim Britain stole from them nearly two centuries ago, and which the two nations fought a war over in 1982, Washington has always tried to take no side. US policy casts it more as a dispute over a territory than a population. This is why the referendum poses a potential dilemma for the U.S., diplomats and political scientists say.

"What we hope is that an act of self-determination in a free society, where people are able to vote as they did in Puerto Rico, is not something that anybody can dismiss or ignore," Britain's ambassador to Chile, Jon Benjamin, told The Associated Press. "It's a self-evident reflection of the will of the people. And that will be the case shortly in the Falkland Islands too. The people there have the right to choose how they are governed and under whose sovereignty."

Mark Jones, a Latin American politics expert at Rice University in Texas, called the U.S. position "tortured" and difficult to maintain.

"It's hypocritical for the U.S. to deny the right of the Falkland Islanders to self-determination, while at the same time supporting that same right for a host of other groups throughout the globe. The referendum's clear-cut outcome makes the U.S. position increasingly untenable and difficult to justify," Jones said.

The Falkland Islands Government is a direct democracy and largely self-governing, although Britain handles its defense and foreign affairs, and the queen's representative has veto power over its decisions. So far, islanders have decided to keep their permanent population very small, making it very hard to obtain formal "islander status."

Excluding the British military and civilian contractors, the islands' population was 2,563 in last year's census, and only 1,973 of them had islander status. The referendum rules exclude anyone who lacks a British passport and hasn't lived in the islands for the last 12 months.

It boils down to 1,650 voting adults, a tiny electorate and one in which the voters all know each other — and their parents and grandparents, some going back nine generations — very well. There were no polls before the vote, but islanders interviewed by the AP predicted that nearly everyone would vote to keep things as they are.

Immediately following the vote, Falkland Islands lawmakers Sharon Halford and Mike Summers planned to arrive in Washington to lobby administration officials and members of Congress.

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Associated Press writers Michael Warren in Buenos Aires and Luis Alonso Lugo in Washington contributed to this report.

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Michael Warren on Twitter: (at)mwarrenap

Luis Alonso Lugo on Twitter: (at)luisalonsolugo

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