Guyana’s escalating debate over migrant workers, foreign companies and access to government contracts is in danger of becoming a political distraction from the harder questions of procurement, accountability and labour exploitation, according to Dr. Terrence Richard Blackman, who is urging the country to separate legitimate scrutiny of migration from hostility toward the people who come here to work.

In his latest Sunday essay, “The Odyssey from Dhaka to Den Amstel,” published by the Guyana Business Journal, Blackman argues that Guyana’s own history makes it particularly ill-suited to turn migrants into political scapegoats.

Blackman is a Professor and Chair of Mathematics at Medgar Evers College, CUNY, and Founder and Publisher of the Guyana Business Journal. He places the present controversy against Guyana’s long history of forced, indentured and voluntary migration.