Category:Jamaican American

From Jamaica Wiki

Jamaican American s are all people who live in America but have been born in Jamaica or are of Jamaican heritage. Most of the Jamaican Americans live in New York City as well as in South Florida and Hartford.

Contents 1 The first Jamaicans in America 2 Significant Immigration Waves 3 Reasons for migrating

[edit] The first Jamaicans in America

The first Jamaicans that had migrated to America are several workers who arrived in Jamestown, Virginia in 1619. They were not slaves although the Portuguese had already started to bring black slaves to America.

During the slavery the Caribbean colonies needed a lot of workers. That is the main reason for the huge migration of Jamaicans in the 1850s. In 1865 slavery was abolished in The United States. Still American planters had been hiring workers because of the workforce shortage. Many of these temporary workers were in fact Jamaicans. They used to work several months in America and than return to Jamaica. In the period between 1881 and the World War I, the United States recruited over 90,000 workers from Jamaica. All of them were hired to work on the Panama Canal. During the World War I and World War II many Jamaicans were hired to work in the American military bases.

[edit] Significant Immigration Waves

There were three major migration waves from Jamaica to The United States. The first wave was between 1900 and the 1920s and it was a small one. The second migration wave was in fact the weakest one and it occurred between the 1930s and the mid-1960s, when a new migration policy was adopted. The Act that banned more than 100 Jamaicans to come to America per year was called The McCarran-Walter Act. Because of the act many Jamaicans migrated to the United Kingdom instead of going to The United States.

The third wave of migration was the largest one. It started in 1965 and continues today. The huge migration of Jamaicans to the USA was because of the British migration restrictions that affected Jamaicans. Britain banned the migration of people from its former black Commonwealth colonies. On the other hand the Hart-Celler Immigration Reform Act from 1965 allowed Jamaicans to come to The USA.

Nowadays Jamaicans form one of the largest foreign communities in The United States. However their exact numbers are hard to estimate.

[edit] Reasons for migrating

The main reasons for Jamaicans migration to America were socio-economic reasons. The Jamaican economy was not strong and live in Jamaica was hard. The economy was based on plantation agriculture. There was no economic diversity and no openings for professional and skilled jobs. The land distribution in Jamaica was also quite poor and unfair. Many of the farmers were left with no land or just small plantations that were insufficient for their needs. The incomes were quite low and the unemployment – quite high. The standard of life declined even more during the 1970s due to inflation. Jamaica's huge foreign debt and the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) restructuring of the economy made the life in Jamaica even more hard and unbearable. The crime was increasing because of the ppoverty and unemployment. Because of these reasons many Jamaicans left to America to seek better life and safety.