Letters & Opinion

Is it worth the price we pay to seek greener pastures?

Image of Carlton Ishmael
By Carlton Ishmael

Glancing through the newspaper last week I was taken aback by an advertisement that read ‘Great Employment Opportunity in Canada”, saying that there was and is an open gateway to Canada because it’s in need of thousands of employees.

This could be made easy, I said, as all one had to do was apply and all arrangements would be made, inclusive of obtaining a visa and other travelling documents, possibly also secured housing and employment on arrival.

The First World is looking to the Third World to reestablish their work force, to ensure that their economy remains buoyant. A verry tempting and lucrative opportunity and a chance to earn big money and give you a new lease on life, is how it’s presented.

But good as it may look or sound, it is precisely this type of situation being advertised for labour in small countries like ours that is creating the continual brain drain in our region.

The same is the situation in the United Kingdom and America — always willing to “help the natives” of the region by extracting them to help improve their work force.

Many people from their existing work force are dying, especially from the existing pandemic, some are refusing to work because they reject taking the Vaccine and a lot of other reasons.

Greed will always be a reason to migrate, lack of opportunity at home will also be a valid reason, and since development is so slow in our region, plus the fact of our low wages, who in their right mind would not think that a brilliant reason to seek-out this new life?

Forget your family, forget this warm climate, forget your friends and country because the grass is always greener elsewhere. Indeed, we are being openly colonized all over again, with the chains removed from our feet and put around our pockets and our stomachs.

The idea is to starve us, let the cost of living become unbearable, make it difficult for us to survive at home — and if you keep us divided and at each-other’s throats, the best solution is to get out and stay away.

This Country will always remain undeveloped, while we give our life line to the first world, and work ourselves to the bone, in sub human temperatures, so as to realize this new dream.

On the other hand, the state has not found it fit or right to deal with our plight. They sit and wait for foreign and local “experts” to offer us a helping hand and bring in Tourists. They are the ones with the money to establish the necessary industries to go back to bananas, to feed the UK market, keep our import bill at maximum, so we will remain forever dependent.

I know of friends as well as family who followed that same trail years ago with most of them only having shattered dreams. The idea was to go out there, gain all the needed wealth, and return home to build, or establish themselves, back at home. But for some unknown reason they seldom return, in fact they send for all their children and extended family — and behold by the time they decide to return they are all too old, feeble and drained, too weak to enjoy whatsoever life they have left. In fact, in most cases they return home to die, because in the prime of their lives they gave all of their worth and their strength to the new continents, living the dream, eating The Big Apple — and only what’s left is the memory of their past in the land that gave them birth.

In most cases, most who migrate are not to be blamed because island conditions can be hard, but the price I see we pay to gain that so-called wealth… Sometimes I wonder if it’s worth it.

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