Jamaica looks to tap diaspora investment as Florida leads community’s growth in U.S.

The number of people in the United States identifying as Jamaican because they were either born in the English-speaking Caribbean nation or are of Jamaican heritage has held steady over the last decade, according to U.S. Census figures.

And now Florida, where the Jamaican community began growing in the late 1970s and ‘80s, has edged out New York as having the largest population of Jamaicans in the U.S. The overall population increased by almost 100,000 people between 2011 and 2021, according to the American Community Survey, which reported the overall Jamaica population in the United States to be nearly 1.2 million compared to about 1 million a decade earlier.

Rupert Rhodd, a Parkland resident who moved to Broward County from New York over 30 years ago and today heads the Coalition of Jamaican Alumni Associations of Florida, says he isn’t surprised by the estimated 321, 189 individuals of Jamaican descent who currently call the state home compared to New York population of 311,753.

For one, the state, and South Florida in particular, is geographically closer to Jamaica, an island of 2.8 million people that is less than 600 miles off the Florida coast. Secondly, “individuals tend to organize themselves easier here,” said Rhodd, who created an umbrella group to bring together splintered organizations that sometimes held similar events on the same day.

That ability to come together has long been at the backbone of the country’s diaspora outreach. Today, the Jamaican government is hoping that Jamaicans abroad can help in the island’s economic turnaround, as it considers foreign direct investment to be a key driver of its growth.

“What I see every day, is that there are interests from entrepreneurs and enterprising people from all over the world who are seeing opportunities in Jamaica, and they’re coming to acquire land to set up business,” Prime Minister Andrew Holness said in a recent Miami Herald interview.

Holness, 50, said he wants the country’s diaspora, which sent a record $3 billion-plus in remittances back to the island since 2021 from the United States, to come back.

“Not just to own homes, which I think is an excellent start, not just to buy our products,” Holness said. “I want them to come back and set up business here, to take some of the skills that they have developed and hold dear and make something of it here in Jamaica.”

That is easier said than done, even he acknowledges. For one, there is Jamaica’s bureaucracy, its slow pace of doing business and an institutional framework that still needs modernizing. The country ranks above average in comparison to other Latin American and Caribbean countries, according to the World Bank’s “Doing Business” report, but it still lags behind other world economies.

“As a government, we are making these deep institutional changes, which will be beneficial to the people of Jamaica, certainly in terms of the establishment of the rule of law, ensuring that we deal firmly and effectively with corruption, increasing the efficiency of the public bureaucracy, increasing financial access, integrating technology in everything that we do to improve service delivery,” the prime minister said. “That will benefit the local Jamaican who lives here. But it will also be the biggest thing that we can do for the diaspora.”

Such changes would be welcome, according to members of the diaspora, who have long struggled on how to be more invested in the island beyond sending cash remittances and food.

Peter Gracey, a real estate broker and entrepreneur who lives in Leesburg in Central Florida, said it is “very hard to convince a lot of people who are not already engaged of investing in Jamaica because of... news that keeps coming out,” such as the country’s high crime rate.

However, he does believe there are opportunities, one of which has to do with the government’s Special Economic Zone Authority, which offers tax breaks and other benefits.

“I think that is the area we need to push,” he said. “You don’t have to live in Jamaica to invest; it’s a new way of looking at things, instead of saying ‘We’re going to go to Jamaica and build a house and rent it out.’ ”

Earlier this year, Gracey was elected to the Global Jamaica Diaspora Council as the representative for the southern United States. The goal of the council is to deepen diaspora engagement and offer advice to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. One of his key initiatives will be to push such investments.

“They can do it with small or big investment, and not having to live there,” he said. “That would eliminate the conversations about how you built something and you’re worried about it and you’re going to lose it tomorrow. It goes beyond the concerns about crime and all that.”

Rhodd, an economist who serves as associate dean in the business school at Florida Atlantic University, said the community’s concerns are real. But that doesn’t mean they cannot contribute to the betterment of Jamaica in other ways.

“What needs to happen is there needs to be some assurances that when investments goes from the diaspora to Jamaica, the level of risks is somewhat limited,” he said. “If the returns are there, capital will flow from here to there. But it’s also about the level of risk.”

For now, he believes the best way Jamaicans can contribute to their homeland is through organizing and determining where the strategic needs are, and where they can best have impact.

“One of the most important ways in which we can harness resources from the diaspora here to help Jamaica and its different institutions, different areas is to develop good relationships between Jamaicans, Jamaican agencies, Jamaican firms and diaspora people,” said Rhodd. “Most of us belong to some Jamaican organization.”

“They want to help, they want to give back as much as possible,” he added. “They are giving back but there are areas that we could develop more.”

The community’s ability to organize, whether to celebrate its independence or to promote its vibrant culture, has long been at the backbone of the country’s diaspora politics, which in 2004 led to the creation of the Diaspora Advisory Board. The precursor of the Global Jamaica Diaspora Council, the advisory board brought together Jamaicans from all walks of life.

Building on that concept, the Global Council today comprises of 14 elected members from across diaspora communities in the U.S., the United Kingdom and Canada and 16 appointed members. Meeting every two years, the council members’ primary goal is to provide expertise and advice, all with the idea of helping the country advance.

“In our diaspora, anywhere in the world, we are less concerned about politics, we are concerned about helping,” Rhodd said, “whether it’s our individual schools or schools collectively, or just helping people.”