Premier McKeeva Bush has said one reason
the government decided to temporarily suspend term limits on foreign workers
while a comprehensive review of the law is conducted is because of the large
number of expatriates due to be rolled over in the next 18 months.
Mr. Bush said that in the last three months
of 2011, 700 people are due to be rolled over. Next year, another 3,500 would
be rolled over, and in the next 18 months, the figure is over 5,000.
The latter figure represents more than a
quarter of the 19,753 work permit holders in Cayman as of 30 June 2011.
Considering the figure is already down over 6,700 permits from the peak in
2008, losing thousands of more people would devastate the local economy.
Years ago, before the global financial
meltdown helped cause a government budget crisis here, significantly raising
the cost of living, and before gang murders and armed robberies became a weekly
– if not daily – occurrence, it might have been easy to recruit replacements
for those who are leaving. Although Cayman remains a beautiful place to live
and work for many people, it has certainly lost some of its lustre and the
prospects for the future are uncertain.
With the business world becoming a global
village, there are increasingly good opportunities for those wishing to live
abroad. In addition, as more and more post-World War II baby boomers retire
there’s going to be a labour shortage in many of Cayman’s traditional labour
markets, meaning recruitment will become increasingly difficult here.
Some Caymanians will complain that by
allowing expatriates to remain here, Caymanians are being denied jobs. As we’ve pointed out before, as the number of
expatriates has decreased in recent years, unemployment of Caymanians increased;
so have the number of vacant rental homes and apartments, most of which
provided important income to Caymanians; and so have Caymanian-owned business
failures; and so have foreclosures on homes owned by Caymanians.
Suspending the rollover policy is an
essential measure in trying to prevent an already bad local economy from
becoming much worse.
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