Lisa Allen-Agos­ti­ni

Last week, I was one of a few re­porters at a pre-screen­ing of the Cana­di­an movie Home Again, parts of which were lo­cal­ly filmed. Di­rect­ed by Cana­di­an Sudz Suther­land, the film's main char­ac­ters are three Ja­maicans who are de­port­ed from the US, Cana­da and the UK for drugs of­fences.

They land in Ja­maica not know­ing many peo­ple, and with lit­tle fam­i­ly sup­port as they had lived abroad most of their lives. (The film is thought-pro­vok­ing and worth a look. It opens at Movi­eTowne on April 3.) I lead with Home Again be­cause of the re­port tabled in Par­lia­ment last week, No Time to Quit: En­gag­ing Youth at Risk, pre­pared by a Cab­i­net-ap­point­ed com­mit­tee chaired by Prof Sel­wyn Ryan. The oth­er mem­bers of the com­mit­tee were deputy chair Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad, Dr Lennox Bernard, Prof Pa­tri­cia Mo­hammed and Dr Mar­jorie Thor­pe. I con­fess I haven't yet fin­ished read­ing the re­port, but I've hit about the halfway mark of the ex­ec­u­tive sum­ma­ry and haven't yet seen the word "de­por­tee" men­tioned. I think that in dis­cussing gangs, drugs, the nar­co-econ­o­my and our youth at risk, it is an es­sen­tial fac­tor to con­sid­er. A Trinidad Ex­press ar­ti­cle on March 23 looked at the re­port Pre­vent­ing a Se­cu­ri­ty Cri­sis in the Caribbean, pub­lished in Sep­tem­ber 2012 by the US Sen­ate Cau­cus on In­ter­na­tion­al Nar­cotics Con­trol.

The sto­ry says, "The re­port re­ferred to this coun­try, which US Im­mi­gra­tion and Cus­toms En­force­ment sta­tis­tics show re­ceived 447 de­por­tees con­vict­ed of crim­i­nal of­fences be­tween 2011 and 2012, specif­i­cal­ly in re­la­tion to the drug trade." The sto­ry quotes T&T Am­bas­sador to the UN Rod­ney Charles as say­ing, "There are in­stances where per­sons who left the re­gion as ba­bies are de­port­ed to the re­gion af­ter com­mit­ting crime. They grew up [abroad], they ac­quired crim­i­nal habits there and they are de­posit­ed on our shores. Un­able to sur­vive whether in Mex­i­co, in Hon­duras, in T&T and in­deed in the en­tire Caribbean, they of­ten times end up in the drug trade. "Crim­i­nals with es­sen­tial­ly PhDs in crime from the sole world su­per­pow­er are ex­port­ed to us and we are told to do the best we could with them."

It's a co­nun­drum, one of more than aca­d­e­m­ic im­por­tance to us in T&T. Some of these PhDs end up on our drug blocks, be­cause that is the on­ly life they know, and in­deed it is the on­ly life they will coun­te­nance. Who wants to work for min­i­mum wage when there is a far more lu­cra­tive al­ter­na­tive, one in which they are al­ready high­ly qual­i­fied job ap­pli­cants? In a 2008 ar­ti­cle, for­mer US Am­bas­sador to T&T Dr Roy Austin ar­gued that the re­cidi­vism rate for de­por­tees to T&T was rather low, and cast doubt on the hy­poth­e­sis that de­por­tees are re­spon­si­ble for drugs crimes to any large ex­tent in this coun­try. How­ev­er, anec­do­tal ev­i­dence ar­gues oth­er­wise. Re­cidi­vism rates are based on those who are caught, charged and con­vict­ed; the good crim­i­nal might nev­er be caught, and if caught, might not be charged; and if charged, might not be con­vict­ed. There is a lot of wig­gle room in this dis­cus­sion. I'm not sug­gest­ing that all the crime in this coun­try can be laid at the feet of de­por­tees.

Of course not. We have plen­ty home-grown crim­i­nals of our own, and a chang­ing sys­tem of val­ues that sup­ports their crim­i­nal­i­ty. The Ryan re­port con­trasts the at­ti­tude of pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions with that of to­day's youths (and al­though the re­port specif­i­cal­ly treats with In­di­ans in this para­graph, I'm pret­ty sure it would al­so be true of the rest of the mid­dle class): "The par­ents of the cur­rent gen­er­a­tion of In­do-Trinida­di­an youth sac­ri­ficed tremen­dous­ly to en­sure that their chil­dren do not suf­fer the hard­ships they did when they were grow­ing up. [...] They en­dow their chil­dren lav­ish­ly with every ma­te­r­i­al com­fort and lux­u­ry in­clud­ing cars, com­put­ers, cell phones, iPads and even apart­ments. Though some of these youths do well in school and even at­tend uni­ver­si­ty, they lack the sense of val­ues that ac­com­pa­nies hard work and sac­ri­fice." It is of note that the Ryan com­mit­tee rec­om­mends com­pul­so­ry non-mil­i­tary na­tion­al ser­vice for youths across the board. It is un­sur­pris­ing that the rec­om­men­da­tion finds some but not uni­ver­sal sup­port, con­sid­er­ing the same hard-work-vs-easy-mon­ey dilem­ma to which I re­ferred above. It's not on­ly de­por­tees who may look down on low-or min­i­mum-wage jobs, which are prac­ti­cal­ly the on­ly ones avail­able to those with­out ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion. Whether or not we ad­mit it, we as a so­ci­ety have be­come ad­dict­ed to easy mon­ey and ab­hor hard work.