Pandemic job loss at centre of permanent residency battle

A woman whose permanent residency application was turned down by the Immigration Appeals Tribunal has filed a writ challenging the decision on the grounds that she was not a visiting tourist as outlined in the reason for turning her down.

Allison Rene Manning, a partner of a Caymanian man and mother of a Caymanian child, had taken her case to the tribunal after the director of Workforce Opportunities and Residency Cayman, known as WORC, rejected her application.

Her original application had been turned down after the WORC director said she had failed to meet the ‘legal and ordinary resident’ test because she was considered to be a ‘tourist visitor’ after her work permit was cancelled at the beginning of the COVID pandemic in March 2020. Her next work permit had been granted on 10 Feb. 2022.

Manning, a restaurant worker, in her writ filed with the Grand Court on 8 Aug., argues that the Immigration Appeals Tribunal erred in upholding the director’s decision in considering her a tourist visitor, as the definition of a tourist visitor, under the Immigration Act, is a “person arriving in the Islands for a visit of not more than six months’ duration other than for a professional, financial trade or business purpose or for the purpose of seeking or engaging in employment”.

She stated that she had not “arrived” on island after the cancellation of her work permit. She had arrived on 29 Sept. 2019 on a work permit and remained until 13 April 2022, when she departed while subject to a work permit.

Lost job during COVID

Manning argues that despite losing her job in the restaurant industry when Cayman closed its borders during the pandemic, she had remained here with her partner and child because she considered Cayman her “long-term home”.

“She maintained her abode and continued to develop her family life. Her general living situation did not change. It remained the same as it had done throughout the period that she had been subject to a work permit (i.e. from around October 2015),” the writ noted. She pointed this out in her permanent residency application on 15 Feb. 2024.

When the borders reopened in 2022, she was granted a new work permit.

“In light of the above,” the writ stated, “no reasonable or proportionate decision maker could conclude that Ms Manning was in the jurisdiction as a ‘tourist visitor’ or for ‘genuine touristic purposes’. The only rational explanation for Ms Manning not continuing to be subject to a work permit was the advent of the pandemic which prevented her from finding employment.”

She noted that all of her subsequent five work permits issued by WORC from February 2022 had stated that her term limit was 9 Oct. 2024.

“This demonstrated that WORC considered her to have been legally and ordinarily resident throughout the relevant period,” the writ stated.

The writ also noted that if she had not been considered legally or ordinarily resident in Cayman for the stated period, she would not have been allowed to sit the history and culture test the process requires, and her application for permanent residency would have been summarily dismissed, but instead it was accepted and processed.

Manning argues as well that the tribunal should have overturned the director’s decision because he had not taken into account her rights to a family life under the Bill of Rights.

She is asking the court to quash the WORC director’s and the Immigration Appeals Tribunal’s decision, and to grant an order that her permanent residency application be granted or to remit the matter back to the director for a fresh decision.