The Jamaican influence here in Europe is strong! In Carcassonne reggae music blares from passing cars containing French people. Last Saturday night we shared Toulouse with Bounty Killa who performed at the Havana Café; then we shared the plane with him to London early on Sunday morning. Posters are up in Toulouse advertising Gregory Isaacs in May.

At Gatwick airport the immigration officer who admitted us was Jamaican. In the airport lobby our travelling companion - a surgeon from Montego Bay - was recognised by one of his former nurses, now practising in Birmingham. In England we stay with a woman who was my chemistry laboratory supervisor at UWI in the 1970s. She subsequently got her PhD in Chemistry and migrated to England in the 1980s. England is chock-a-block with Jamaicans; and we love it, because of the remittances they send back without which we could not balance our national budget.

In reality, the remittances Jamaica receives - the largest single source of foreign currency entering our economy - are nothing but table scraps. I'll bet that the contribution that Jamaicans in England, Canada and the USA annually make to their host economies is greater than Jamaica's annual GDP! Imagine what Jamaica's economy would be like if even 25 per cent of Jamaicans living overseas were being productive in their own land!

Jamaica has lost some of her most productive citizens, and this has stunted our national development. As we are more and more unable to pay our teachers and nurses what they are worth, we set them up as fodder for overseas recruiters. The national treasure that poor Jamaica expends to train our brightest and best, is being exported to enrich the wealthiest nations of the world. In real terms Jamaica subsidises the economies of rich countries, for we send them our best already trained; these countries do not have to spend money to train a large section of their professional and semi-professional labour force. And what do we get in return? Remittances!

What gets sent back to Jamaica is from the surplus of those living overseas - what they really do not need to live. Recall that their expenses overseas are considerable, e.g. clothes for every season; heating in winter; school fees for the ambitious. These people are earning phenomenal incomes, building the wealth of the rich countries. What we get as remittances is nothing more than table scraps!

TRAIN OUR PEOPLE

We are caught in a bind. We must continue to give our people the best training, for Jamaica deserves the best. Yet there is only one global market for labour. An experienced Jamaican nurse is worth what she is paid in Britain, and, if we in Jamaica do not pay her what she is worth, she will migrate. Nevertheless, despite the certainty of the brain drain, we must continue to train our people.

What is to be done? Some way has to be found to increase the salaries of skilled Jamaicans in the public service (wages in the private sector will be sure to follow). So, some way has to be found to increase government revenue.

Most of the rich people in this country are paid far more than they are worth; most of us are paid less than we are worth, and, at times, less than the cost of subsistence. Remember that the minimum wage is J$3,200 per week or just about J$600 per day! How many patties can this buy? How much bread at today's prices? Can you blame people for wanting to migrate?

It is a downward spiral: the less able we are to support ourselves is the greater the desire to migrate, but the poor do not have a great ability to migrate. The more able we are to support ourselves, the greater the capacity to migrate; and so we are exporting the persons best able to pay taxes to make things better.

Some way has to be found to quickly increase government revenue so that better wages can be paid. It seems to me that we have to reconsider progressive taxation as an alternative to the flat tax we have now. And we must continue to educate and train our people to increase the productive potential of our nation, for we can expect remittances to decline as the rich countries slip into recession.

Table scraps are not enough. It is about time we paid our own way in the world.