Ocho Rios community like many other communities with great potential have been disrupted by various immigration opportunities granted to their citizens. These opportunities have no doubt helped many families while destroying many others.
Very often we find that families are ripped apart after one member of a marriage union had been granted a visa to a foreign country. This has also happen to dismantled other relationships which we refer to as Common Law wife & husband. Siblings have also been affected dramatically after not seeing or hearing from each other for many years or a lifetime.
Immigrants who have left their countries in search of a better life sometime do, but there are others who have found a bitter life instead. The culture shock and other adjustments have shattered many hopes and expectations. Their hopes for a better life have crumbled. Some have been able to bounce back after awhile, while others have been swallowed up by series of failures.
On an overall basis, being able to migrate is not a bad thing or opportunity, rather it is how the opportunity is often miss-handled by those who have been given the opportunity and also the strategies put in place by these countries to capture the full attention and aspirations of their potential immigrants.
These psychological and economical strategies which have been put in place by the more advanced and developed countries are properly tailored for economic success in their country. Many countries have benefited greatly from immigration. True it is that both countries and immigrants have benefited in one way or another. Though this may be factual, a more rounded scrutiny will reveal that the down side of international immigration has had crippling effects on many other countries. These countries which have become victims suffers as their social structure and economical potential disappears when their human resource gets ripped away. As a result of this many victims have been created directly and indirectly within the immigration communities.
Quite often there are immigrants who would love to return to their loved ones, but because of finical restrains or concurring activities makes it seemingly impossible to return home even for a short while. Some have been able to return, but just with enough time to hug, shake hands, eat a few meals, a swim in the ocean and off again. No real quality time is spent to reconnect with their loved ones at home or their former communities and so this has caused a serious family break down in communities across the world within many nations. There are extreme cases in which family members have become ill and died as a result without the knowledge of their families or relatives living abroad. Other extreme cases such as travelers over-staying their time with the hope of gaining leagal residency. During these lengthy periods, parent, children, siblings and other families or relatives may become ill or even die and these persons are unable to render assistance or attend funerals because once they leave the country trying to return would only prove futile.
There are some other serious rippling effects from migration which has left many communities like our beloved Ocho Rios with broken families and disconnected communities. Even returning residents and natives visiting often feel like total strangers whenever they return home. Houses, lands, vehicles and many other personal and family properties have been left abundant, only to be vandalized or suffer depreciation over time. Houses left unattended are often occupied by intruders, lands left undeveloped due to the absence of owners then taken over by squatters. In many cases there are even worst scenarios where the older heads or grandparents and relatives are left to suffer or fend for themselves.
Ocho Rios Home Coming (International) Group seeks desperately to assist in resolving some of these problems by first reconnecting its residents via Facebook, the internationally established and popular social internet media and through other social network medias that are available. O.R.H.C.Intl will definitely be establishing its own internet web-base where all its activities and affairs will be monitored. The group is also fucussed on reaching out to other residents who are not internet savvy or cannot be contacted via the internet. The radio waves and other news medias will be instrumental in accomplishing that task along with one-on-one verbal exchanges.
We hope that after reading these issues that this blog have cited, residents will see the need to assist by volunteering their services. Please help by contributing a small fraction of your time and professional skills such as, secretarial, project management & event coordination, public relations, marketing and research skills, networking and other skills that are required as this movement progresses. In doing so you'll be making a positive difference to correcting and modifying these trends that are socially, culturally, psychologically and economically harmful both to us, our offsprings, communities, country and the world at large.
Editor: L. A. Boyd
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