Jamaican Americans

Unfavorable Conditions in Jamaica Lead to Mass Exodus

As early as the 1850s, the primary factor behind emigration had been a lack of suitable employment on the island. From the mid-19th century to the Great Depression, as many as 150,000 underprivileged Jamaicans moved to other parts of the Caribbean, Central America, and the United States in search of work.

In the years after World War II, Jamaica's economy grew considerably. A rise in the disposable income of many Americans combined with the embargo against Cuba to make Jamaica an alluring tourist destination in the 1950s. Increased tourism and the success of bauxite production, which is crucial in the manufacturing of aluminum, brought in a steady current of foreign capital. Although the bauxite industry was thriving, it provided few jobs and was almost entirely foreign-owned.

Similarly, tourism dollars primarily went to the foreign entities that owned the resorts. Foreign ownership of the financial sector and lending institutions limited economic growth. For a nation already severely afflicted with widespread poverty, and where more than 80 percent of the available land was too mountainous to be used for agricultural purposes, a poor distribution of the land further contributed to the failure of the farming industry and caused Jamaica to be almost entirely dependent upon imports.

There have been three distinct phases of Jamaican immigration: between 1900 and 1929, between 1930 and 1969, and between 1970 and 1989. There was a somewhat less robust Jamaican presence in the United States prior to those periods. After the abolition of slavery, workers from Jamaica were recruited to work on American plantations in order to assist with annual harvests. Between the 1880s and World War I, nearly 90,000 Jamaicans were sponsored by the United States to assist in building the Panama Canal. During the interwar period, Jamaican men were brought to the United States to work at American military bases.

Between 1962 and 1972, the unemployment rate in Jamaica doubled. The oil crisis and the worldwide economic recession that occurred in the 1970s certainly had an adverse effect on Jamaica's economy. More than 30 percent of children were suffering from malnutrition, and 40 percent of adults were functionally illiterate. Added complications were brought about by the mass exodus of educated and professional Jamaicans from the island throughout the 1970s. As much as 15 percent of the total population left Jamaica in the 1970s; much of this group comprised lawyers, doctors, scholars, and other skilled professionals. The civil rights movement made the United States a particularly appealing destination for this group.

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