Finally, someone said it.
On Friday afternoon, Work Permit Board Chairman David Ritch finally put a face on the threat posed to the Cayman Islands which is necessitating the rollover policy.
While many people might have figured it out already – there have certainly been whispers about the rollover policy targeting a certain nationality – David Ritch, in unhesitating fashion, told the attendees of the Council of Associations’ Immigration Forum that the number of Jamaicans in the Cayman Islands is a major concern.
Without the rollover policy, Mr. Ritch made an argument that the number of Jamaicans here could escalate to numbers surpassing current Caymanians.
Mr. Ritch acknowledged that the issue was an uncomfortable topic and that no one wanted to talk about it. But he talked about it anyway, because he said someone had to.
It took courage to do that, especially since some will now undoubtedly label Mr. Ritch a racist because of it.
But Mr. Ritch insists he is just stating the facts, and he later was able to back up his suppositions with statistical evidence.
Mr. Ritch, who has some Jamaican heritage himself, was not condemning Jamaicans, or taking away from their contributions to the development of the Cayman Islands.
However, Mr. Ritch pointed out that Jamaicans make up the largest group of non-Caymanians resident here by far. And nearly two-thirds of all expats that have been here more than eight years are Jamaicans.
Without the rollover policy then, Mr. Ritch assumes, based on those statistics, most Jamaicans would want to remain here long enough to qualify to apply for permanent residency. And if a significant number were successful in that application, which would give them a clear path to Caymanian Status, Mr. Ritch believes the Jamaicans would bring their dependents over to Cayman, which could escalate the number of Jamaicans here to levels the country could not support.
Mr. Ritch might be right or he might be wrong in his assumptions. But by laying the cards on the table with regard to a specific immigration threat to the country, he has given the rollover policy debate more substance than all the vague warnings about Caymanians possibly losing their own country could have ever done.
In a debate that has too often been waged with emotionally-charged language and spurious logic, it is good to see some cold, hard statistics which can be extrapolated and analysed to give this rollover debate a more rational platform, even if it is uncomfortable.
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