Jamaica, United States collaborate on tracking delinquent students

Jamaicans with outstanding college loans and living in the United States will encounter several obstacles when attempting to modify or renew their immigration status. The government of Jamaica and its US counterpart have partnered to identify Jamaican immigrants with outstanding student loan arrears.

Cheryl Surjue made this announcement as the manager of the Loan Servicing Department at the Student Loan Bureau (SLB) in Jamaica. She noted that there are outstanding loans  of several professional groups that have immigrated to the United States and other nations, leaving behind unpaid college loans, emphasizing that “when they leave, we are not able to fully track their whereabouts, (and) those loans tend to go bad.”

Further explaining the operations that are in place to work along with people having these outstanding student loans, Ms. Surjue mentioned that “people who may have migrated on their J1 visa and want to renew their status in the US, before they can actually do that, there is an arrangement,  where the US government needs to find out from us if this person is indebted to the Jamaican government,“  Surjue declared.  This will help determine whether the person has an unpaid student loan before their immigration status is modified.

The Loan Servicing Department manager declared that repaying the loan would include fully paying off the balance and bringing the account to current.
Ms. Surjue hopes this will help trigger student loan borrowers to start servicing their loans.

The Student Loan Bureau representative also stated that the cross-border agreement with the US government has helped the Student Loan Bureau recover some unpaid student debts. Ms. Surjue advised that people contact the Student Loan Bureau before migrating.

“Before you get to that point, we want persons to be responsible borrowers. This is why we have launched our financial literacy program, to know how we can assist and how the beneficiaries may go about repaying their loans – and not wait until it gets to that point of the loan being bad or we have to solicit debt collectors to try and locate you,” she declared.

Through this program and the US Partnership, the Student Loan Bureau aims to encourage Jamaican borrowers abroad to honor their debt obligations and ensure that they are not caught off guard when renewing their immigration status.