Immigrants can crowd out local workforce – Finance Ministry

…says immigration creating demands on treasury

In the wake of reports that thousands of immigrants are unaccounted for after entering Guyana legally, even the Finance Ministry has acknowledged the risk posed by immigrants on the labour market.

According to the Finance Ministry’s mid-year report for 2019—which was unveiled by Finance Minister Winston Jordan – the influx of immigrants has the potential of pressuring the local labour market by reducing opportunities for Guyanese.
“The influx of immigrants has the potential of crowding out employment of local workers across several sectors,” the report stated, adding that this can also end up “creating pressure in the labour market”.
In addition, the Finance Ministry’s report also noted that the influx of immigrants has created, and continues to create, demands on the treasury— which has to set up systems to ensure that migrants are registered and have access to basic social services. Here, the report singles out Venezuelans, who have come to Guyana in droves fleeing economic deprivation from their embattled homeland.
“Government, through the Multi-agency coordinating committee for migration, continues to monitor the situation closely in order to assess and address potential socioeconomic threats and risks,” the report also stated.
Recently, Minister Jordan received much criticism after he had pointed out, and even gave justification, for the fact that foreign workers were being given preference by employers for undertaking tasks at lower rates of pay than Guyanese.
At the time, Jordan was speaking at a People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR) press conference. He was quoted in sections of the media as saying that “the fact that you can go in a country of a native and get a job, what does it suggest? Many things, for one, the labour cost in that country is very high, because if I am prepared to cut grass for $1,000 but the native wants to cut grass for $1,500 who are you going to employ? Most obviously, the $1,000… and I would go for the $1,000”.
Last year, the Citizenship Ministry had revealed to the Foreign Affairs Committee of Parliament that over 22,000 persons entered Guyana from January to April. The Ministry had revealed that of this number, only 6, 170 had departed. In addition, it was shown that there were no records of 17,615 immigrants departing from 2013 to 2018.
A breakdown of the statistics showed that over the past 7 months, over 8,500 Haitians entered the country, but a fraction of that number left. In 2017, 3,515 Haitians came but only 291 departed. Moreover, according to media reports, up to April last year, 1,238 came and 85 departed.
Back in March of this year, it was revealed that despite having thousands of Haitians enter Guyana unaccounted for last year, the coalition Government had sought to extend the time that Haitians spend in Guyana to an automatic six months.
This was detailed in a letter dated January 31, 2019, addressed to then Foreign Affairs Minister Carl Greenidge and copied to Minister of State, Joseph Harmon; Citizenship Minister Winston Felix, and Public Security Minister Khemraj Ramjattan.
However, the influx of immigrants is not limited to the Haitians. In 2017, a total of 44, 747 Cubans came to Guyana, but 7, 255 were unaccounted for. Recent figures released by the authorities indicated that for the first seven months of the year, 41,272 Cuban nationals came to Guyana via the Cheddi Jagan International Airport (CJIA).
Meanwhile, the figures indicated that some 11,119 Trinidad and Tobago nationals arrived in Guyana between January and July of 2019. Total arrivals taking into account all nationalities stood at 135,220.