GUYANESE can be found all over the world selling their skills or plying their trades. Many are successful and are making significant impacts in the societies where they live. Successive governments have been calling on this demographic to return home and play a role in the nation’s growth and development. This  call is yet to be met with significant success, even as more are leaving, notably among which are 80-plus percent of our tertiary-educated graduates.Human capital is important to a country’s advancement. While other countries given their standard of living and incentives are strong pull factors, looking at our re-migrant push may require taking a hard and honest look at disincentives that serve as hindrances to achieving this. This should be done with the aim at taking corrective action through policies, laws and programmes.

A leading push factor is better and higher education. On completion, having found lucrative employment or economic opportunities to improve one’s standard of living, persons are likely to make the country their adopted home. Other factors are opportunities to improve one’s economic well-being and being the beneficiaries of family resettlement programmes.  In each instance, roots have been established that afford opportunities or the possibilities of same.

For instance, home ownership can be pursued through a system that is void of undue hassle, corruption, and within one’s means to finance a mortgage. There is the availability of job opportunities where extra, available time can be used to improve one’s earnings. The education system allows opportunities regardless of age, facilitating academic improvement and creation of new careers. Opportunities such as these help the individual/family to set goals and work towards them with less hassle and in relative comfort. Social services, including public transportation, while not universal in quality, are seen as relatively better than what are offered in Guyana.

It is unusual to hear a re-migrant, particularly one working in the public sector, complain about overt political intrusion in the organisation and its decision-making. There is the perception that having to be mindful of not offending the political directorate denudes the professionalism and independence public service requires.
Some have returned to their adopted country rather than facilitate it.

The potential re-migrant having lived in societies where several options are available to pursue their social, cultural and economic interests, having gotten accustomed to these, would want some options here. One issue that stands out is the acquisition of motor vehicles. Instead of having a fixed policy to qualify to import a vehicle that would attract duty-free concession, options can be presented. One such is buying a motor vehicle here without being denied duty-free concession. The extended benefit of this is revenue to the country and local car dealers.

Apart from promoting Guyana as home to invest in, there must be specifics and hassle-free experiences that can lure persons to return. The bureaucracy in the re-migrant scheme should be revisited. Persons coming from societies where expectations are held that once the requirements specified to enjoy a benefit are met, such should be hassle-free on the providing business or institution. Having to go back and forth and being told a different story every time is construed as roadblocks and wanting people to beg or bribe their way for what they are entitled to.

In the wanting to establish business and unleash entrepreneurial skills aware that in the adopted country such is facilitated in an enabling environment, expectations will be that persons will be advised how they can pursue such path, rather than be told what cannot be done.

What has to be taken cognisance of is that re-migrants having lived in different societies, particularly in the metropolitan countries that are forward-thinking, pro-active and always on the go, it requires factoring in such culture in serving this demographic. This does not mean Guyanese have to abandon our unique identity, but what is required is recognition that we can learn the systems management of other countries in order to improve ours. It should be said that it is that level of open-mindedness that has influenced other countries migration programmes which continue to attract our human capital for their growth and development.

Making re-migration attractive requires holistic approaches. Where weaknesses in society will be addressed to meet expectations, whereby though living in Guyana is not exactly what the re-migrant may have experienced in their adopted homes, the sense of comfort and opportunities can be assured.