Trinidad-born rap­per, Nic­ki Mi­naj was a young child when her moth­er took her to live with her in New York in the 1980s.

Mi­naj, who par­tic­i­pat­ed in this year’s Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions, is one of the big names in the hip hop and mu­sic in­dus­try hav­ing sold more than five mil­lion of her mu­sic al­bums world­wide.

Like Mi­naj, many T&T na­tion­als have left in the past and are still leav­ing these shores to look for the dream life in oth­er coun­tries.

Dr Nass­er Mustapha, co-or­di­na­tor, So­ci­ol­o­gy Unit, Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), who spoke the Sun­day Guardian, gave his views on why he thinks lo­cals mi­grate.

He list­ed the

Peo­ple em­i­grat­ing to more de­vel­oped coun­tries is not a new de­vel­op­ment.

He said cit­i­zens of T&T, like most de­vel­op­ing coun­tries, are look­ing for "green­er pas­tures."

Young ed­u­cat­ed pro­fes­sion­als are one of the ma­jor groups that he iden­ti­fied as be­ing most prone to em­i­grate.

"The main rea­sons why young peo­ple leave, es­pe­cial­ly uni­ver­si­ty grad­u­ates, is that it takes a while to get a job. They may get some­thing, but it is be­low what they are trained for. There are op­por­tu­ni­ties abroad and for fur­ther stud­ies," Mustapha said.

He al­so said that young mar­ried cou­ples who have few com­mit­ments al­so mi­grate be­cause they feel that is the eas­i­er route rather than just stay­ing and fac­ing lo­cal strug­gles.

T&T’s brain drain will on­ly hurt the coun­try’s de­vel­op­ment as the Gov­ern­ment has in­vest­ed large amounts of mon­ey in ed­u­cat­ing young peo­ple and it is ex­pect­ed that these youths will stay back and work in the coun­try, he said.

He com­pared T&T to Cana­da, a coun­try with a pop­u­la­tion of 35 mil­lion peo­ple, con­sid­ered a high-in­come coun­try that at­tracts im­mi­grants from all over the world.

"Even if you have a hum­ble job in Cana­da you can af­ford the ne­ces­si­ties of life. A per­son on an av­er­age in­come can af­ford a house in Cana­da.

"A per­son with an av­er­age in­come in T&T can­not af­ford a house. There is a lot of short-term em­ploy­ment in T&T and the banks don’t give loans to peo­ple with these con­tracts. In Cana­da, some­one work­ing in a store can af­ford an apart­ment."

David John­ston, then Gov­er­nor-Gen­er­al of Cana­da, who was on a state vis­it to T&T in 2012, es­ti­mat­ed dur­ing his vis­it that there are rough­ly 100,000 Cana­di­an cit­i­zens of T&T ori­gin.

Mustapha said Cana­da was a coun­try that has va­can­cies for peo­ple with tech­ni­cal skills and so it at­tracts T&T na­tion­als as well as peo­ple from all over the world.

Apart from young pro­fes­sion­als who are mi­grat­ing, Mustapha said that low­er-in­come peo­ple, sin­gle moth­ers are al­so look­ing for bet­ter op­por­tu­ni­ties in oth­er coun­tries.

Crime is an­oth­er rea­son that dri­ves peo­ple out of the T&T as they be­lieve it is not a safe place to raise a fam­i­ly.

He said if the crime rate were low­er, T&T would be able to at­tract more tourists, cre­ate more job op­por­tu­ni­ties that would keep peo­ple from leav­ing the coun­try.

"Just as the au­thor­i­ties were con­cerned about mak­ing Car­ni­val safe, they have to make oth­er things safe," Mustapha added.

'Ex­pect mi­gra­tion to ac­cel­er­ate'

Dr An­tho­ny Gon­salves, Ho­n­ourary Se­nior Fel­low, In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions, UWI, told the Sun­day Guardian that based on T&T’s de­te­ri­o­rat­ing eco­nom­ic and so­cial sit­u­a­tion he ex­pect­ed mi­gra­tion to "ac­cel­er­ate" in the fu­ture.

Al­though, he notes that T&T is not the on­ly re­gion­al coun­try deal­ing with mi­gra­tion and brain drain. In fact, he said, it has be­come a se­ri­ous prob­lem across the Caribbean.

"Mi­gra­tion is like­ly to step up as it is al­ready bad among the skilled and ed­u­cat­ed pop­u­la­tion in T&T. If we don’t turn around the eco­nom­ic and so­ci­etal sit­u­a­tions, peo­ple will con­tin­ue to leave the coun­try."

He be­lieves that younger peo­ple no longer see T&T as a coun­try with a fu­ture.

"When you look at the num­ber of lo­cals who study in the Unit­ed States, it shows the im­por­tance of peo­ple get­ting their kids out of T&T to oth­er places. You see these kids re­turn­ing in the Sum­mer but we know that their in­ten­tion is to set­tle abroad."

He said there are se­ri­ous prob­lems in the na­tion’s schools which lead to gang vi­o­lence. There are al­so oth­er so­cial ills and the au­thor­i­ties are ig­nor­ing these prob­lems. This then leads to more fam­i­lies want­i­ng to mi­grate.

"Peo­ple don’t want to raise their fam­i­lies here as they wor­ry that their chil­dren will end up in a gang. Peo­ple are lock­ing their doors and putting up bur­glar proofs as the mur­der rate ris­es."

SO­LU­TIONS

To stem the brain drain and keep T&T’s best and bright­est in the coun­try, Mustapha said that there must be an em­pha­sis on de­vel­op­ing lo­cal en­tre­pre­neurs and hav­ing peo­ple start their busi­ness­es.

"I have seen over the last decade, many peo­ple rise from hav­ing noth­ing, by hav­ing a skill and mar­ket­ing them­selves. Those are the peo­ple who are eco­nom­i­cal­ly in­de­pen­dent. Some­one can be suc­cess­ful in the food busi­ness. Then there are oth­er skills like plumb­ing, car­pen­try and ma­son­ry. The peo­ple who mi­grate are those that don’t see a bright fu­ture."

He said dif­fer­ent in­sti­tu­tions like the me­dia and re­li­gion have to pro­mote "hope and op­ti­mism" that will spur peo­ple to cre­ate bet­ter con­di­tions for them­selves in the coun­try.

"It is not on­ly about run­ning away and es­cap­ing, but we must al­so have a com­mit­ment to our coun­try and its de­vel­op­ment. We have so much more than the rest of the Caribbean," Mustapha added.

Gon­salves said that T&T’s econ­o­my was in a bad shape and to keep cit­i­zens from leav­ing, the Gov­ern­ment must de­vel­op the econ­o­my.

"There are no op­por­tu­ni­ties on the hori­zons like a big ho­tel in To­ba­go or no new man­u­fac­tur­ing or no in­dus­tri­al parks ex­pand­ing. The Gov­ern­ment has to be in­no­v­a­tive."

T&T’S MI­GRA­TION PAT­TERNS

A re­search study con­duct­ed in 2014 by the African, Caribbean and Pa­cif­ic Group of States (ACP) Ob­ser­va­to­ry on Mi­gra­tion and im­ple­ment­ed by In­ter­na­tion­al Or­ga­ni­za­tion of Mi­gra­tion (IOM) found that cit­i­zens of T&T moved to de­vel­oped coun­tries in the North to im­prove their stan­dard of liv­ing and gain qual­i­fi­ca­tions.

Some of the key find­ings in­clude:

•Trinida­di­ans tend to move to coun­tries in the North to im­prove their stan­dard of liv­ing and gain qual­i­fi­ca­tions—65.9 per cent live in the Unit­ed States; 18.1 per cent in Cana­da; 8.4 per cent in the Unit­ed King­dom; and 1.3 per cent in Ja­maica.

•57.7 per cent of Trinida­di­an mi­grants ob­tained cer­ti­fi­ca­tions and qual­i­fi­ca­tions while liv­ing abroad.

•The flow of re­mit­tances to T&T is one of the ma­jor ben­e­fits of mi­gra­tion to lo­cal house­holds. But the study found that 29.4 per cent of re­spon­dents ad­mit­ted to send­ing re­mit­tances on­ly "in emer­gen­cies or on spe­cial oc­ca­sions."

Es­tab­lished in 1951, the IOM has 173 mem­ber states, a fur­ther eight states hold­ing ob­serv­er sta­tus and of­fices in over 100 coun­tries.

Its web­site states that the IOM is ded­i­cat­ed to pro­mot­ing hu­mane and or­der­ly mi­gra­tion for the ben­e­fit of all. It does so by pro­vid­ing ser­vices and ad­vice to gov­ern­ments and mi­grants.

Sta­tis­tics from the busi­ness and da­ta web­site, Macro Trend show that the cur­rent net mi­gra­tion rate for T&T in 2020 is -0.574 per 1,000 pop­u­la­tion, a 0.35 per cent de­cline from 2019.

There was al­so a de­cline in 2018.

The net mi­gra­tion rate is the dif­fer­ence be­tween the num­ber of im­mi­grants (peo­ple com­ing in­to an area) and the num­ber of em­i­grants (peo­ple leav­ing an area) through­out the year.

Ac­cord­ing to these sta­tis­tics, there is a slight de­cline of peo­ple who are leav­ing, but like Gon­salves, Mustapha ques­tioned these sta­tis­tics, say­ing based on per­son­al ob­ser­va­tion, the re­al­i­ty on the ground may be dif­fer­ent.

BOX



Pi­ar­co mom ready to leave

One year ago, Alana Phillips jumped out of sleep when she heard her dogs bark­ing at her house in St He­le­na, Pi­ar­co.

Just af­ter mid­night, she looked out of her bed­room win­dow, on­ly to see two masked men in her yard. She start­ed to shout and called the po­lice. With­in min­utes the cat bur­glars were gone, and the po­lice were at her doorsteps. But the in­ci­dent left her shak­en, and she vowed to leave the coun­try and nev­er re­turn.

Phillips, a moth­er of two sons, who works in a sales de­part­ment in the pri­vate sec­tor, told the Sun­day Guardian that she is fed up with life in T&T.

"I have sons and I want a bet­ter life for them. I want them to have a good life like parks where they could roam freely and a safe neigh­bour­hood where they can play in the yard. Here in this coun­try, we don’t have that. It just isn’t safe. You can’t even en­joy your earn­ings," the de­pressed moth­er said.

Apart from the crime, she al­so wants bet­ter eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ties for her sons and she is not con­fi­dent that they can live to their full po­ten­tial in T&T.

"One of my sons wants to own a busi­ness when he leaves school. But is that pos­si­ble in this coun­try? You al­ways have to be look­ing over your shoul­der be­cause it’s not safe. Not to men­tion, there are few op­por­tu­ni­ties be­cause the econ­o­my is not good. Peo­ple have no mon­ey to spend. It’s hard to find good jobs. I want bet­ter for my kids."

With enough mon­ey saved, she hopes to leave the coun­try with­in two years for the Unit­ed States.

She said she has fam­i­ly there and with her ed­u­ca­tion­al back­ground and her will­ing­ness to ad­vance her stud­ies, she is con­fi­dent she can make it.

"I feel any­where bet­ter than here right now. You can’t make mon­ey, you could get shot be­cause of the crime. The politi­cians in this coun­try on­ly look­ing out for them­selves. I’ve had it. It’s time to get out."