Ta­ble 1

Years Net Mi­gra­tion Net Births

1960-72 -147,002 298,064

1973-87 -108,993 333,880

1988-02 -84,565 172,148

2003-17 -26,603 120,772  

-367,163 924,864

Source: World Bank

Find­ing mi­gra­tion da­ta on CSO Web­site proved dif­fi­cult. Con­sult­ing a sta­tis­ti­cian, a sub­ject-mat­ter ex­pert on Trinidad and To­ba­go pop­u­la­tion da­ta, he not­ed that mi­gra­tion da­ta is a “thorny is­sue”.  Based on in­di­rect de­mo­graph­ic es­ti­ma­tion tech­niques that he had used, he ad­vised that the T&T mi­gra­to­ry ex­pe­ri­ence has been pop­u­la­tion loss due to net mi­gra­tion. The World Bank mi­gra­tion da­ta, (pro­vid­ed by na­tion­al sta­tis­ti­cal in­sti­tutes from mem­ber coun­tries) con­firm the ex­pert’s opin­ion of net pop­u­la­tion loss for T&T dur­ing the pe­ri­od 1960 to 2017.

Ta­ble 1 shows that be­tween 1960-2017 the net mi­gra­tion da­ta was neg­a­tive mean­ing that more peo­ple left than set­tled. Since these are net fig­ures (those leav­ing less those com­ing), it means that the num­ber of peo­ple mi­grat­ing was con­sid­er­ably high­er than the net fig­ure which was just un­der four hun­dred thou­sand (367,163). This is a mas­sive num­ber giv­en the rel­a­tive­ly small T&T pop­u­la­tion, yet the net birth rate was large enough to off­set the loss, hence the pop­u­la­tion con­tin­ued to grow.

Fran­cis Pre­vatt, min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment, in his bud­get speech pre­sent­ed on De­cem­ber 11, 1970, said that “em­i­grants are, to a large ex­tent, trained pro­fes­sion­al and tech­ni­cal work­ers… The de­par­ture of such per­sons does not cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties for the large body of the un­em­ployed, which is com­prised main­ly young, in­ex­pe­ri­enced and un­skilled work­ers. The ab­sence of a pro­fes­sion­al of­ten makes it dif­fi­cult to em­ploy the un­skilled work­er. The brain drain presents this coun­try with an ex­treme­ly in­tractable dilem­ma.”

A coun­try’s on­ly im­por­tant re­source is its peo­ple. With­out peo­ple of vi­sion, tal­ent, and en­tre­pre­neur­ial hunger, no coun­try can de­vel­op. Nat­ur­al re­sources mat­ter on­ly if peo­ple have the skills, tech­nol­o­gy and vi­sion to ex­ploit those re­sources. That re­mains a co­nun­drum of de­vel­op­ment; how to em­pow­er and mo­ti­vate cit­i­zens to de­vel­op them­selves and by so do­ing to de­vel­op the coun­try’s la­tent eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ties that lie un­recog­nised and un­ex­ploit­ed.

Us­ing Ta­ble 1 da­ta, the coun­try lost on av­er­age 16 per cent of its pop­u­la­tion be­tween 1960-72, an­oth­er ten per cent be­tween 1973-87 and sev­en per cent be­tween 1988 and 2002. These are ex­tra­or­di­nar­i­ly large num­bers but were negat­ed by the high net birth rate which al­lowed the pop­u­la­tion to con­tin­ue grow­ing. There is no da­ta on il­le­gal im­mi­gra­tion. Anec­do­tal ev­i­dence and news­pa­per re­ports sug­gest that il­le­gal im­mi­gra­tion from oth­er Cari­com ter­ri­to­ries was high dur­ing the 1974-85 boom years and was a fac­tor in the pop­u­la­tion ex­pan­sion.

There were many rea­sons for the em­i­gra­tion ex­o­dus. Pri­mar­i­ly, the eco­nom­ic op­tions in T&T were con­sid­ered weak and em­i­gra­tion to the me­trop­o­les of­fered the chance of a bet­ter life. Be­fore the 1974-85 oil boom, the ear­ly post-in­de­pen­dence years were char­ac­ter­ized by weak eco­nom­ic growth and high un­em­ploy­ment lev­els as pop­u­la­tion growth ex­ceed­ed job growth. In ad­di­tion, be­cause of de­clin­ing pro­duc­tion vol­umes and ris­ing costs BP (1969) and Shell (1974) ex­it­ed their T&T op­er­a­tions by sell­ing them to the GORTT. Many new­ly in­de­pen­dent coun­tries had a sim­i­lar em­i­gra­tion ex­pe­ri­ence.

De­vel­op­ment is an un­even process. In pass­ing, the 1970 un­rest was la­belled the “Black Pow­er Ri­ots” caused by wide­spread dis­sat­is­fac­tion that In­de­pen­dence brought nei­ther ma­te­r­i­al nor so­cial ad­vance­ment fast enough.  The more like­ly pre­dis­pos­ing con­di­tion was the dis­sat­is­fac­tion caused by the high em­ploy­ment amongst un­der 25s.  This back­ground gives con­text to the Gov­ern­ment’s haste to ex­pand the coun­try’s in­fra­struc­tur­al ca­pac­i­ty, by build­ing schools, ex­pand­ing ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tions, hos­pi­tals and road in­fra­struc­ture si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly when the oil boom ar­rived in 1974.

Pre­vatt’s com­ments demon­strate that the em­i­gra­tion out­flow pre­sent­ed se­ri­ous pol­i­cy chal­lenges, “an in­tractable dilem­ma”, that has not been ad­e­quate­ly ex­plained by re­search work to date. Emi­gres tend to be in their prime, al­low­ing them enough time to build fam­i­lies and in­te­grate in­to the new so­ci­ety to fa­cil­i­tate suc­cess­ful re­set­tle­ment.  Los­ing thou­sands of trained pro­fes­sion­al and tech­ni­cal work­ers would desta­bilise any so­ci­ety by cre­at­ing gaps that would be dif­fi­cult and take time to fill.  

Whilst we know that the emi­gres were trained and in­clud­ed many of the na­tion’s best and the bright­est from the most up­ward­ly mo­bile, we do not know the sex, age, or race of the emi­gres, or which com­mu­ni­ties were af­fect­ed. Un­doubt­ed­ly em­i­grants came from every de­mo­graph­ic group, but some seg­ments were af­fect­ed more than oth­ers, chang­ing the so­cioe­co­nom­ic bal­ance and the so­ci­ety’s cul­tur­al and so­cial val­ues.  

Anec­do­tal ev­i­dence sug­gests the largest num­ber of those em­i­grat­ing came from the black and mixed seg­ments of the pop­u­la­tion af­fect­ing the trades, the pro­fes­sions, and the black busi­ness class ex­plain­ing why there are few “black” busi­ness­es to­day. Those who made use of the ex­pand­ed ed­u­ca­tion­al and busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties have be­come the new mid­dle and up­per class, chang­ing the racial com­po­si­tion of these seg­ments and the so­cial dy­nam­ics. Some have been left be­hind. These so­cio­cul­tur­al changes are yet to be re­searched and ex­plained though they are sure­ly hav­ing an on­go­ing im­pact in every area.