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Can Jamaica treat Haitian refugees more kindly?
- aquest
- Aug 12, 2025
- 3 min read
Dear Prime Minister Andrew Holness and National Security Minister Horace Chang,
I write to you not only as a citizen concerned with present policy, but also as one conscious of how today’s choices will be read and taught to the young minds of Jamaica and CARICOM in 2050; indeed, by about 2035.
In the past few years, Jamaica has received small open sailboats from Haiti, usually carrying fewer than 60 passengers—men, women, and children—fleeing from untenable social, economic, political, health, security, and educational conditions. Their vessels are often perilously unseaworthy, their journeys a testament to desperation rather than adventure.
Our response as a state has, too often, been bureaucratic, transactional, and distant—characterised by military boots and means. We have invoked immigration protocols and security concerns, but rarely have we led with the spirit of solidarity that once animated our Caribbean cooperation. Haiti, after all, is no mere “foreign” nation in our regional imagination; it is the cradle of Black freedom in the Americas, whose 1804 revolution altered the destiny of the Western Hemisphere, including Jamaica. Many Haitians are fairly close kith and kin.
A Historian’s Voice from 2050
In history classes of 2050, this period is taught with a tone of disappointment, even by the AIs. Teachers remind their students that in the third decade of the 21st century, as Haiti descended into further political collapse and gang violence, some CARICOM nations—Jamaica among them—faced the choice of opening their arms or tightening their gates.
In too many cases, political leadership framed the refugees primarily as security risks, rather than as people in urgent need of refuge. By 2050, historians and research bots record that this stance weakened the moral authority Jamaica once enjoyed in regional and international diplomacy. Students are asked: “How could a nation with such a rich history of resistance to oppression turn away those who sought its shores for safety?”
Today’s Opportunity
Prime Minister Holness and Minister Chang, your offices have the ability to write a different chapter. The humanitarian approach—one that treats Haitian arrivals with dignity, offers temporary protection, mobilises regional burden-sharing, and engages international partners for resettlement support—would not only honour our obligations under international law, but would also resonate with our moral inheritance as a Caribbean people.
If our present stance is remembered as one of empathy, foresight, and cooperation, 2050 history classes will teach Jamaican students that their leaders saw beyond short-term political caution. If, however, we persist in treating these arrivals as unwelcome inconveniences, the historians of 2050 will write that Jamaica, in a time of great moral testing, “looked away.”
A Likely Outcome if Present Policies Continue
If the current restrictive, security-heavy approach remains unchanged, we can expect a future where:
Jamaica’s role in CARICOM solidarity is diminished.
Haiti’s instability deepens, leading to larger and more desperate maritime arrivals.
International observers note a dissonance between Jamaica’s rhetoric of regional unity and its treatment of Haitians.
History e-books of 2050 mark this era as a time when Jamaican policy failed to match the ideals proclaimed in public forums.
Closing Appeal
I urge you both to consider that in 25 years, young Jamaicans will be reading about your decisions in this matter. They will ask whether their leaders acted in a way consistent with the values of human dignity, Caribbean unity, and the lessons of our own liberation struggles.\
The question before you is not merely how to manage migration flows. It is how to be remembered—and taught—in the classrooms of the future.
Respectfully,
Dennis A. Minott, PhD
A-QuEST, Jamaica
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