(CNS): The minister responsible for immigration and Caymanian employment has said the first phase of changes to the legislation will be supported by a new era of efficiency and a change in approach that prioritizes the needs of ordinary Caymanians over politics, power and influence. Michael Myles is promising not only changes to the law, that he believes local people want to see, but going forward employers will be held accountable and face questions when they fail to meet their succession plans.
Hosting the first of three townhall meetings as part of the current public consultation period on the amendment bill which will rename the current immigration law as the Caymanian Protection Act as it was known decades ago, the minister outlined why the National Coalition for Caymanians were making the changes and the policy intent. Speaking to a large audience at the Mary Miller hall last week he explained the challenges that the government is focused on tackling.
Myles said the amendments were not just about change for change’s sake but about solving the problems that have developed within the local immigration system. To illustrate the scale of the problems Myles pointed out a number of statistics compiled by WORC. He said that the department is dealing with around 65,000 applications per year but of those some forty thousand are applications for temporary permits. Of those temp permits Myles said that 30,000 on average go on to be full time. This he said is because of the time it takes to clear a full permit.
He said this was an illustration of the enormous pressure on the department and the self perpetuating efficiency problem because the massive amount of temporary permits are as a result of the length of time it takes to get a full permit but staff cant get to the work they must do on full time permits because they are dealing with the temporary applications and extensions or temp applications. Myles said temporary permits were never designed to be holding permits but this situation has emerged due to the inefficiencies created by this situation and the failure of successive governments to put a stop to it because this drives revenue.
“Immigration can no longer be about just revenue,” the minister said. “Immigration must be about protecting Caymanians and protecting the borders. “Our coalition has decided we need to change the focus of immigration and that focus has to be with us reducing temporary work permits.”
Government is also spending some $40million a year on scholarships but with government traditionally working in silos and not sharing information as immigration minister Myles said he nor his ministry know who’s overseas, where or what they are studying even though we have over 1,800 young people in some sort of tertiary education that government is paying for and as a result he said he and the education minister Rolston Anglin have decided that “silo needs to be kicked down and and kicked down fast” as he need a clear understanding what the labour market is and what we need to do to prepare for young people to come home and get jobs.
“We have to get temporary work permits under control and we have to ensure that the talent that we want is fast-tracked straight to a full work permit and be more efficient so that we can match returning graduates to vacancies. “As long as we’re processing 40,000 temps a year, immigration is going to be in the same state that it has always been chaos. And we can’t do that anymore. Our government is prepared to move immigration to a next level and has to be where it makes sense in particular for our people,”Myles explained.
The minister said government now spends about CI$60 in welfare to support Caymanians whoa re out of work which includes able-bodied people who are struggling to find work because jobs are going to “cheap labor coming in” which is ” shrinking the the labor market. “Immigration may make $100 million a year, but we’re spending $60million a year of that on welfare,” he said as stressed the need for efficiency to get local people back to work.
When we look at immigration reform, we wanted to be thoughtful about it he said as he pointed to the importance of the information and data as it explains the problem. “We have to now start to look at where we’re going wrong…We have to make immigration efficient,” Myles said as he revealed more numbers about the immigration boards which he said process less than 15% of those 65,000 work permits.
“The boards aren’t efficient,” he said explaining that they use immigration administrators taking them away from their work making the administration less efficient as well.
“We have to make sure that the boards are better and we have to ensure that the boards are non-political. Now part of this process, you would think that it’s common sense. It’s not. What we’ve done as from successive governments, we play politics with it. I have no interest in playing politics with immigration or any other department that falls under Caymanian employment,” he added.
While Cayman has moved forward over the last few decades in many ways Myles questioned whether ordinary people have benefitted as he stressed how the immigration reform bill was only part of the challenge and how important being efficient is going to be in getting local people into work onto career paths and then climbing into top jobs.
Myles spoke about the need for employers to once again prioritize Caymanians and while he said he did not expect every job in Cayman to be held by a local person, bosses must do better and if they don’t hire Caymanians that “they won’t hire anyone,” he said to resounding applause.
Government is expected to present the new immigration bill to parliament during the course of the next meeting which commences with the budget statement on 5 November. However the public consultation period extends to 15 November.
For more information on the draft bill to submit comments or ask questions send an email to ImmigrationConsultation@gov.ky. See the easy reference guide to the law and the consultation here and the full draft bill here.
See the townhall meeting in full on CIGTV below:
