Guyana: Another Ally in Repatriation—They Want Their Citizens Back
Cooperation with Latin America
By: Alex C.
In two previous articles—though not written by me—White Papers has highlighted how several Arab States and African States have begun courting their respective diaspora in the West. These countries want the comparatively highly educated and skilled diaspora to come home and help rebuild from disaster or fill growing labor gaps, and now another rapidly developing country is calling its people home.
Guyana, thrown headlong into national prosperity by a booming oil industry, is desperate for its diaspora to return home and contribute to the country’s rapid development.
Between 2019 and 2024 the Guyanese GDP rocketed up from just 5.4 billion dollars to a staggering 21.2 billion, according to the latest IMF data.
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Economic growth is so rapid that multiple billions are added to the nation’s balance sheet each quarter, despite a population of just 817,607 people.
A country that once had a Human Development Index score lower than that of Palestine is quickly becoming one of the wealthiest, most traveled to, and most rapidly developing on the planet. Economic growth like this requires labor, and Guyana does not have nearly enough.
This is where Guyanese interests and those of Western nationalists intersect. Guyana has begun to call its diaspora home at the same moment that Western nations are increasingly turning to parties and political personalities that promote remigration and repatriation of non-Western immigrants to their homelands.
There are more than 320,000 Guyanese in the United States, most of whom are concentrated in New York City and comprise the fifth-largest foreign population in America’s largest city.
This concentration of Guyanese has led Guyana’s government and private sector to begin hosting job fairs in New York City while the country’s foreign ministry is employing experts with the explicit aim of courting the diaspora [Guyana targets the diaspora to meet labour demands, The St Kitts Nevis Observer, July 30, 2024]. Guyana, in a sensible and decidedly patriotic move, has decided against recruiting non-Guyanese for these new high income industries developing in the country and have instead decided to target the nearly million strong diaspora.
Guyana’s foreign minister is quoted as saying:
“For many years, we have talked about the brain drain, here it is [sic] we have reached a stage whereby Guyanese companies are coming to North America to tap the brains of Guyanese who have left, and their children to go back and to play a part in the transformation and the development.” [Guyana Trying To Reverse Brain Drain, The St Kitts Nevis Observer, July 30, 2024]
I think that any Western nationalist will be highly sympathetic to this line of thinking. The Guyanese state is engaging in a form of nationalism which many of us wish that our own countries would.
It is also worth saying that if we in the West want to make nationalism even more appealing to our populations, we must highlight cases like Guyana and lean into the fact that there are nations who want their diaspora back in a manner that serves as a compliment to our desire to end the Great Replacement.
Many Western corporations are also investing in Guyana by building hotels, tech firms, and helping the previously poorly developed nations acquire the skills and technology needed for their new high income economy. Were the West to be run by a patriotic and nationalist class of elite, it would make sense for us to contribute to the Guyanese desire to return its diaspora home.
We could and should train the Guyanese residing in the West with the skills their homeland needs, and Western firms operating in Guyana could hire the diaspora in order to facilitate their return home.
As the Guyanese government urges its people to come home, Western nationalists should champion the cause of Guyana and use it as yet another example of how a world based upon nations and peoples rather than multiculturalism could be just as if not more cooperative than the one that we currently inhabit.
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