Latest update February 17th, 2025 1:24 PM
Apr 17, 2017 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
In my 2003 column on Easter titled, “No one will be there today,” I reflected on how many persons would be on the seawall and come the next year, 2004; so many of them we will lose to migration. The next Easter, my column was captioned; “What did I write about last Easter?” Here is an extract from that piece written a dozen years ago; ”Let’s start with migration. How many persons, individual or with their families you saw on the seawall last year that are no longer living in Guyana? I have counted seven families that have enjoyed a lovely time last year on the Atlantic who have since migrated.
“Four of those families went through self-sponsorship to Canada. The rest just went in search of greener pastures. The rate of exodus has accelerated tremendously since last April. I have dealt with this topic in a recent article so no need to return to it. But one thing is certain – come Easter 2005, many, many of the faces you see today on the Camp Street seawall would have disappeared from this lovely, richly endowed but jinxed country.”
We are now in 2017 and it is amazing and sad how many of our friends have left us for other countries since 2004. In 2007, my Easter column had the headline, “… up, up and away.” Here is a small quote from it; “A couple of days ago, the President shared out a thousand kites. Those kites today will sail away into the open skies, soon to be followed by the people who are holding the strings to which the kites are attached. Do you think Guyanese will migrate to Iraq in search of a better life? “
As we pass each Easter, many Guyanese pass us and leave us behind; they are gone. Here is what I wrote in my 2010 Easter article; “Today, people will take to the streets in numbers that can never be matched by any other day in the entire year. If you want to see the future of Guyana then go out today and you will have before your eyes thousands of babies in all shapes and forms from all types of ethnicities. Are they the future of Guyana? Unfortunately, they are not.”
So here I am writing another piece on Easter and thinking of that Easter column in 2003. What has changed in my country? One thing is sure; from 2003 to 2017, the level of permanent exit must be enormous. In that time span, this country must have lost some very valuable skills. What makes one think that the tide has been stemmed since the new government came into being? I doubt it. I would like to see the statistics, but I fear that there are sections of this country that are going to be more eager to leave because of the election of the new government.
These sections would never be happy unless their own kinds of people are in charge of Guyana. And it is not that they are going to stay and hope for the best. They will not stay in Guyana because that is the way they are. Quite unfortunately, I believe some policies of the new administration aren’t going to encourage people to stay.
There can be no comparison between what went on with the Jagdeo/Ramotar cabals and the young administration which hasn’t completed two years as yet. One has to be devoid of all moral threads in one’s existence to make that comparison, but some of the mistakes of the APNU+AFC Coalition have been a real turn off for the nation.
I have this funny feeling that until Mr. Trump leaves the White House, all kinds of visas will be hard to come by at the American Embassy. I suspect when it comes to American visas, Guyana will return to earlier times from the 1980s up to about 2008, when visas were difficult to obtain.
There seems to have been a direct edict from the Obama Administration to US Embassies around the world to be liberal with people who want to visit the US. Out of that policy, Guyanese were finding it relatively easy to get non-immigration visas. Mr. Trump simply does not wish to have a free flow of non-white people going to the US.
What this means is that the level of migration will slow up. The Easter people we see with their kites one year then gone the next year will not be the pattern once Trump remains the US President. So this Easter, those we see on the seawall, we will see next year.
Feb 17, 2025
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