Across generations, some of Jamaica’s most popular songs have carried an unmistakably emotional message. They honour those who have died, those who stayed, those who left but never stopped loving the country, and those who continue to carry Jamaica in their hearts wherever they live.
The message is familiar because it reflects something deeply Jamaican. Few countries inspire such enduring loyalty among people who no longer live within their borders. Yet behind these repeated musical tributes and calls to return lies a more urgent national question: is Jamaica truly ready to receive the people it keeps calling home?
It is a beautiful idea. Jamaica has always inspired that kind of loyalty.
People leave the island, yet the island rarely leaves them. It travels in their accents, food, music, humour, memories and ambitions. It is present in the barrels and remittances sent home, the houses built room by room, the school fees paid from overseas and the retirement plans that begin with the words, “One day, I am going back.”
But beneath the music lies a harder question.
When Jamaica calls its people home, what exactly is it calling them home to?
The country has become very good at celebrating the diaspora. Jamaicans overseas are praised as ambassadors, investors, cultural champions and guardians of the national identity. They are encouraged to visit, purchase property, establish businesses and bring their professional experience home.
Jamaica’s National Diaspora Policy recognises investments in banking, property, business, tourism, technology and the stock market. The Government has also established arrangements intended to help people seeking to return, retire and invest, including a Returning Residents Unit and an inter-ministerial mechanism to consider the difficulties returnees encounter. Jamaica’s National Diaspora Policy once estimated diaspora investment at US$1.2 billion.
The ambition is therefore not new. Neither are the complaints.
“It Is a Trap”
I recently met a returning Jamaican who had done considerably more than build a retirement house or purchase an apartment.
This person had returned and invested heavily in a substantial business—an undertaking measured in millions of pounds, creating economic activity in Jamaica rather than merely transferring personal wealth into a property.
After approximately a decade, I asked about the experience.
The response was chillingly simple:
“It is a trap. It is a honey trap.”
That is not a funny remark when it comes from someone who has committed years of work and a considerable portion of their wealth to Jamaica.
More troublingly, it was not the first time I had heard it. Another investor, also responsible for a multimillion-dollar commitment, had independently described the experience in almost exactly the same way.
Two private accounts do not amount to a scientific study. They cannot establish that every returnee has the same experience. Many Jamaicans have returned successfully, established businesses and built fulfilling lives.
But when serious investors independently describe their homecoming as a trap, the country should resist its instinct to become defensive. It should ask what happened between the welcome and the warning.
Was it the bureaucracy? The cost of electricity? The difficulty obtaining approvals? Shifting requirements? Unanswered correspondence? Crime? Informal gatekeepers? Professional jealousy? The perception that progress depends less upon written rules than upon whom one knows?
Or was it the accumulation of all these things?
A trap does not necessarily mean that someone deliberately designed it. Sometimes a trap is simply a system that enthusiastically welcomes money at the entrance but becomes indifferent to the investor once the money is committed.
The Red Carpet Cannot Be Selective
Returnees frequently speak about what Jamaicans call “bad mind”: resentment directed at someone believed to have money, status or foreign experience.
The expression is sometimes used too casually, as though every disagreement must be caused by jealousy. Not every setback is bad mind. Not every delayed application is sabotage. Rules still matter, and returnees should not expect to bypass them merely because they arrived with overseas capital.
But the concern cannot be dismissed entirely.
Some returnees report being treated not as Jamaicans bringing useful experience home but as outsiders who should remain quiet, spend their money and accept whatever treatment they receive. Their professional knowledge may be viewed as arrogance. Their expectations of written procedures, deadlines and accountability can be interpreted as an attempt to tell local people how to run Jamaica.
That tension becomes sharper when investors believe that other business interests receive smoother access, faster decisions or more coordinated assistance.
This does not need to become a reckless racial accusation. Unless there is verifiable evidence of racial discrimination, it would be wrong to present suspicion as fact. Nevertheless, Jamaica must be willing to examine whether its investment system operates consistently.
The proper question is straightforward: why do some investors appear to receive a red carpet while some returning Jamaicans encounter a maze?
The answer should not depend on race, nationality, social connections, political access or the size of an investor’s public profile. The same published requirements, service standards and appeal processes should apply to everyone.
If different investors receive radically different treatment, institutions should be able to explain why.
Success Has Changed What “Home” Means
There is another uncomfortable truth in Jamaica’s conversation about return.
Some of the country’s most successful musicians, athletes, executives and entrepreneurs no longer live exclusively in Jamaica. They may own houses here and remain deeply connected to the island. They may invest, employ people, visit regularly and continue to sing passionately about Jamaican life. Yet their families, businesses or primary residences may be based elsewhere.
That does not make them less Jamaican. Nor should they be condemned for making rational decisions about security, education, healthcare, taxation, mobility or access to global markets.
However, it reveals how the meaning of “home” has changed for people with substantial resources.
For the wealthy, the future may not involve choosing one country. It may mean maintaining homes and commercial interests across Jamaica, Britain, Canada, the United States or elsewhere. They can love Jamaica without depending entirely upon Jamaican systems.
Most returnees do not possess that freedom.
An ordinary returning nurse, teacher, tradesperson, civil servant or small-business owner may be placing nearly everything into one decision. The house in Jamaica may represent 30 years of work. The business may be funded by a pension, redundancy payment or the sale of the family home overseas.
If things go wrong, that person may not have another villa, another company or another country waiting in reserve.
Patriotic appeals therefore carry consequences. Calling people home is not merely cultural language. It can influence life-altering financial decisions.
The Jamaican Dream Must Work in Jamaica
Jamaica often celebrates the Jamaican dream after it has been achieved abroad.
We applaud the artist who reaches an international stage, the athlete who signs a major contract and the professional who rises through a foreign institution. Their success becomes proof of Jamaican talent.
But their achievements may also expose a national contradiction.
If Jamaican ability flourishes most reliably after leaving Jamaica, the country cannot survive indefinitely by celebrating the result while ignoring the departure.
The goal cannot simply be to persuade successful Jamaicans to return with accumulated wealth. Jamaica must also become a place where more people can build that wealth without first having to leave.
This means confronting the practical cost of doing business. World Bank analysis has identified electricity as a major obstacle reported by Jamaican firms and noted the country’s dependence on imported energy. High operating costs are not an abstract inconvenience; they can determine whether a factory expands, whether a restaurant survives or whether a new business employs ten people instead of two. World Bank analysis of Jamaica’s private sector
The same seriousness must be applied to permits, land registration, planning decisions, customs, taxation and access to reliable infrastructure. Investors should be able to see where an application is, who is responsible for it and when a decision is due.
A modern investment system should not require endless telephone calls, unexplained visits and favours from influential people.
What Jamaica Must Do
First, Jamaica needs a genuine returnee and diaspora investment service—not merely an information desk. It should assign a named case manager to qualifying investments and coordinate the agencies involved from registration to operation.
Second, approval processes should be transparent and trackable. Requirements, fees, responsible officers and decision deadlines should be visible online. If an application is refused, the investor should receive written reasons and a clear route of review.
Third, the Government should publish data on diaspora-supported businesses: how many were established, how long approvals took, how many survived five or ten years and why others closed.
Fourth, returnees need properly regulated professional support. Too many arrive dependent upon a recommendation from a friend of a friend. Jamaica should maintain accessible registers of verified lawyers, accountants, surveyors, builders, real-estate professionals and business advisers, along with meaningful complaint procedures.
Fifth, the country needs an independent channel through which investors can report obstruction, inconsistent treatment or requests for improper payments without fearing retaliation.
Finally, Jamaica must treat returnees as partners rather than walking wallets. Their international experience will sometimes produce uncomfortable observations. The answer cannot always be, “That is how we do things here.”
Sometimes how we do things here is precisely what must change.
A Homecoming Must Be More Than a Song
There is nothing wrong with music that honours Jamaica. Songs have carried the country across generations and oceans. They remind those abroad that they belong to something larger than the passport in their pockets.
But a song cannot process a permit. Nostalgia cannot reduce an electricity bill. National pride cannot resolve a land dispute, prevent fraud or make an unresponsive institution answer an email.
Jamaica should continue calling its people home—but only while doing the difficult work necessary to make that invitation honest.
A returning resident should not be welcomed at the airport, celebrated at a diaspora conference and abandoned at the first government counter.
A person who invests millions and creates employment should not reach the end of ten years believing that love of country was used to draw them into a system from which they cannot easily escape.
That is the warning contained inside the phrase “honey trap.” The sweetness is Jamaica itself: family, belonging, memory, climate, culture and the emotional pull of home. The trap is what may follow when sentiment meets an unprepared or unaccountable system.
The most important question is therefore not whether Jamaicans abroad still love Jamaica. Their remittances, investments, visits and lifelong attachment have answered that already.
The question is whether Jamaica loves them enough to change.
Before another patriotic chorus urges the diaspora to return, the country must be prepared to answer one simple question:
Come home to what?