There is no stopping migration from Guyana.

Two news articles brought this to light recently. The first was the report on passenger arrivals and departures for 2012 through the CJIA which was really meant to indicate that there's more activity at the airport, but inadvertently threw up some numbers showing that 8131 more passengers left the country than arrived. This continues a trend that has not slowed down for over a decade.

The raw numbers as provided by the Bureau of Statistics show that between 2002 and 2010 there were 99,962 more outgoing passengers through CJIA than incoming. As a percentage of the population (756,040) that represents a net loss of 13% over nine years.  To put it in more understandable terms it's about 30 people per day are packing up and leaving the country of their birth. (This does not count persons crossing over to Suriname, Venezuela and Brazil by land, statistics for whom are not available as these are largely done through non-legal means). 

And to put it in a global context Guyana's net migration rate (the difference between the number of persons entering and leaving a country during the year per 1,000 persons [based on midyear population]) is 12.78 persons for every 1000 of the population (estimated 2012).  

This gives Guyana the dubious distinction of having the fifth highest migration rate in the world behind only Nauru, Tonga, Micronesia, Syria, Jordan and the Northern Mariana Islands. (CIA Factbook)

And thanks to The Second Report of the Continuous Reporting System on International Migration in the Americas (SICREMI) which was released last week , we now have some more detailed figures to get a better picture of who is leaving, where they are going and to some extent how they are faring in their new countries . 

As expected the vast majority of Guyanese migrate to the United States. From 2005 to 2007, 24,600, and from 2008 to 2010, 20,240. For all Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member countries the figures were 28,800 and 24,300 respectively (CHECK), indicating a slight decline. Within those numbers the breakdown on age of migrant goes as follows: 25 to 34 years, 16%, 35 to 44 years, 22%, and 45 to 54 years, 23%. That adds up to 61% of people in the prime of their working lives.

As for gender, women make up 52% of all migrants compared to 48% for men. In terms of education levels for the years 2010 to 2011, 11% were below secondary school (low); 71% had completed secondary school (medium) and 18% were considered highly educated or having tertiary education. 

The unemployment rates for Guyanese in their new land, for the two periods 2005 to 2007 and 2008 to 2010 for men were 13% and 12%, and for women 7% and 9% respectively. 

Ok now we have the stats down. What does this all mean? Firstly it is clear migration from Guyana continues unabated and remains at worryingly high rates. Why might this be? 

The report notes that despite the worst economic downturn in the developed countries since the Great Depression migration from Latin America and the Caribbean to OECD countries barely declined. What is interesting however is the larger proportion of migrating females, and that might be a result of the personal and economic situations they find themselves in Guyana. Anecdotally it seems women are generally behind migration whereas many men are quite willing to continue living here. This would make sense given the greater equality and status many women find when they do eventually migrate. 

For many of the bourgeoisie this migration might seem baffling. After all, they say, life is not too bad here.  But it is the same decades of migration that they are benefiting from through the form of remittances. (The amount of remittances for 2011 equalled US$401M around 20% of GDP or an average of US$527 per man, woman and child)

This has two benefits: firstly it stabilises the exchange rate (as US dollars remitted have to be turned into Guyana dollars therefore sustaining demand for the local currency). That in turn keeps cost of imports in check. Equally important these remittances are a massive subsidy for all employers who can afford to pay below living wages to their workers in the knowledge that their paychecks are being supplemented by overseas families. So essentially even when you migrate you are still working to enrich the business class back home. How kind. 

However the overall and long term socio-economic effects cannot be positive. Any country whose population is in decline or static will find it extremely difficult to grow. And despite improvements in infrastructure in the past twenty years we have already seen the quality of education and health care decline as teachers and nurses migrate en masse. This in turn leads to more migration as people look for better standards of living for themselves and their children. 

The SICREMI report makes the observation that it was likely that “migration is determined more by the conditions in countries of origin than in the countries of destination”. So it's the push factor rather than the pull or lure of opportunity that is still driving migration.

In the case of Guyana, one can reasonably assume that decades of legal migration have built up a huge reservoir of family members who are being sponsored by relatives already overseas, so it may be the case that even with some economic improvements in Guyana and tougher conditions overseas there are still many residual family members who may be migrating as much for family ties as economic opportunities . 

There is simply no solution to stemming migration save from a sustained increase in the minimum wage and massive improvements to the quality of life, from water, electricity, education and health, citizen security and the justice system. Given the enormous emotional social and economic upheaval that migration causes on individuals it is not taken lightly. So to take that drastic step is surely the most serious indictment any citizen can make of his or her government's administration of a country. The people have spoken and they don't know when they'll be back again...