One ‘Bay’ for all or One ‘Bay’ for some?

Montego Bay is changing before our eyes. What many residents notice daily — more diverse faces on the streets, new professional cohorts in our hospitals, and a tourism skyline rising faster than supporting services — is not anecdote. It is measurable demographic and economic transformation inside a nationally shrinking population.

Official figures show Jamaica remains one of the world’s lowest-immigration countries, with only about 21,000-23,500 foreign-born residents. Yet St James has gained population share while other parishes lose relative weight. Cuban and Haitian arrivals, long-established Chinese and Indian merchant communities, a visible Jewish Chabad presence since 2014, and now formal pipelines of Nigerian doctors and Ghanaian nurses are concentrating in the west.

The first 43 specialist Ghanaian nurses arrived on September 27, 2026; the majority are assigned to the Western Regional Health Authority (WRHA) and South East Regional Health Authority (SERHA). This follows the departure of 27 Cuban health-care workers from Cornwall Regional Hospital and ongoing recruitment talks with Nigeria and India.