By Fr Bobby Gilmore SSC

Fr Bobby Gilmore, a Columban from Ireland and a regular contributor to these pages, spent many years in Mindanao and later in Jamaica. He then worked with Irish migrants in Britain where, with others, he helped secure the release of a group of Irishmen wrongly jailed for a bombing. He is the Chairperson of the Migrant Rights Centre in Dublin (www.mrci.ie). Here he reflects on the heartbreak involved in emigration, drawing on an experience while in Jamaica. For Jamaicans the ‘Barrel’ symbolizes everything that the Balikbayan Box does for Filipinos.

A crisis of papers unfixed,
two three jobs as a domestic
and weathering the cold,
the barrel
in her kitchen-corner

a ship’s hold, constantly
waiting to be filled –
This time bargain clothes,
employers’ cast-offs
for the children back home

(Grace Nichols, Jamaican poet)

The words of the poem by Grace Nichols depict a situation that exists not just in Jamaica and the Caribbean but around the world where women have to leave home and children to find a life.

The Human Factor

The fracture in primary relationships between mother and child is profound with lasting ache and distress on both sides that do not register when immigrant remittances are discussed. Few at home realize the distress of the woman depicted in Grace Nichols’ poem. In Jamaica the children left behind by immigrants are called ‘Barrel Children’. Regularly, throughout the year they receive barrels of food and clothing from absent parents around the world. These barrels are symbols of love, affection and care, an effort to bridge gaps of loss and loneliness. For those immigrants who are undocumented, these gaps cannot be filled by occasional visits home.

Tommy’s Case

One morning Marian, the housekeeper at the rectory, informed me that a young man by the name of Tommy wanted to see me. He was a fine, handsome, young fellow of about twenty-five and well dressed. I opened the grill and invited him in. He started to talk with an American accent and after a few words this dissolved into terrible stammering. To make him feel at ease I offered him coffee. But the stammering did not cease. He told me with great difficulty about himself, that he lived with his grandmother since his mother departed for America when he was five years old. His mother lived in New York. She regularly sent back money and barrels of clothes for him and his grandmother.

Tommy’s problem was that he was unable to write to his mother. He was illiterate. His grandmother, being illiterate herself, did not value education, the need to be able to read and write. She was lax in making sure that Tommy went to school. At the onset of the stammering after his mother left, Tommy was reluctant to go to school because his fellow students made fun of him. Here he was now asking me to write a letter to his mother. It was one of the most difficult pastoral tasks that I ever took on. It was tedious trying to get Tommy to express himself and putting in words not just what he verbally expressed but what his heart wished to say to his mother who was physically absent but lovingly present. After I had finished the letter and Tommy was off to the post office, Marian the housekeeper, watching Tommy walk across the yard said in the local patois, ‘Stammer start after him mother leave for foreign. It must be shock of mother leave. Him granny could not get him to school cause him ashamed of him words’. The incident gave me an insight into an aspect of migration that is seldom thought about.

Trying to compensate

People like Tommy’s mother decide to leave in the hope of a better life for themselves and to improve the lot of the people left behind. Remittance is the word used to describe a transaction between emigrants and their people at home. It is generally a monetary contribution from an immigrant’s earnings to keep the food on the table at home. Of course it can also take the form of barrels of food, clothing, furniture and other goods. Formerly, immigrant remittances got hardly a passing mention on government balance sheets even though they were a welcome package that boosted foreign exchange.

The value of emigrant remittances

It is estimated that Ireland benefited to the tune of five billion pounds sterling from Irish emigrants to Britain between 1950 and1965. There was hardly any recognition of this by Irish governments until recently. Indeed, Irish emigrants were an unnoticed sector of Irish life unless of course they were successful and made a name for themselves overseas. The successful were acclaimed, owned and fêted. Those who sent remittances, like Tommy’s mother, were forgotten, unconsidered.  Lately, emigrant remittances have become an important issue because they have become more important than foreign direct investment from multi-national companies. In Ghana, for example, foreign direct investment is worth three percent of the national income, remittances ten to fifteen percent. In most developing countries, emigrant remittances are the cornerstone of foreign exchange earnings used to pay international debts. In Jamaica emigrant remittances generate almost as much foreign exchange as the primary industry, tourism. The daily queues outside post offices and money-transfer agencies are evidence of the dependency of people at home on money originating from abroad. Worldwide, last year emigrant remittances totaled US$230 billion. The world’s aid budget was US$105 billion.

Banking and remittances

Of course this is a boom for the banking and money-transfer agencies which usually charge from five to eight percent for such transfers. One would imagine that those institutions would give consideration to immigrants and their dependants, people such as Tommy’s mother, who are easily identified. At last, having realized the importance of remittances, the Department for International Development in Britain has set up a website: www.sendmoneyhome.org to increase information about money transfer facilities in the hope of bringing down charges by creating competition. Even the World Bank and the British Bankers’ Association have begun to acknowledge the importance of remittances and have promised to work with the Department of International Development in Britain to make transfers easier, less costly and more transparent.

Human suffering involved

However, while all that rising concern may be welcome news for Tommy and his mother, there is little consideration for the mental, emotional loss and stress being experienced by both, in the separation brought about by the breach in their primary mother-child relationship. While it is easy to quantify immigrant remittances in dollars, however, dollars and designer cast-offs do not fill the gap for mothers and fathers having to leave children behind. How could one quantify Tommy’s and his mother’s loss of each other and the deprivation that he has suffered by his stammer and illiteracy over the years?

In our modern, interconnected world there is considerable space for innovative thinking not just on immigrant remittances but in making migration a more beneficial experience. Surely, if a shrimp’s itinerary from a marine outlet in Mayo to a restaurant table in Beijing can be charted, why is it not possible to offer decent arrangements to immigrants to manage their affairs? In a connected-up world Tommy and his mother and millions like them who miss each other would be enriched. Is it too much to expect?