MPs pass bills mandating COVID vaccines for non-Caymanians

Members of Parliament on Tuesday passed two bills mandating COVID-19 vaccination for non-Caymanians in the Cayman Islands.

All members of government voted in favour of the Customs and Border Control (Amendment) Bill and the Immigration (Transition) (Amendment) Bill, while the Opposition members voted against them, following lengthy debates on Monday and Tuesday.

Under the Immigration Bill, COVID-19 vaccinations will be mandated for: work permit holders and their dependents; people legally and ordinarily resident in the Cayman Islands for at least eight years; residency certificates for individuals of independent means and their spouses or civil partners and dependents; Permanent Residence holders of independent means as well their spouses or civil partners and dependents; Direct Investment Certificate holders; and Substantial Business Presence Residency Certificate holders.

The original wording of the amendment to that bill had also included Residency and Employment Rights Certificate holders who are spouses or civil partners of Caymanians and their dependents, but they were exempted from mandatory vaccination requirements when the legislation was amended at the committee stage.

The Customs and Border Control (Amendment) Bill deals with vaccination requirements for people on student visas and individuals whose entry permits have been granted by Cabinet. The original wording of the amendments to that bill had also included children and dependents of Caymanians seeking permission to enter Cayman, but those references were also removed at committee stage.

Deputy Premier and Minister of Border Control and Labour Chris Saunders, who tabled both bills, said the decision to exempt children and dependents of Caymanians and RERC holders with links to Caymanians from mandatory vaccinations had been made after receiving feedback from members of the public.

The bills with the amended wordings were not immediately available publicly, but the Compass will publish them as soon as they are available.

During the debate, government members said no Caymanians, nor their dependents or children, would be required to be vaccinated.

The government had been accused by opponents of the bills of widening the scope of the demographic that would be required to be vaccinated beyond expatriates renewing or being granted work permits, as had been inferred earlier by officials.

Two ‘Freedom of Choice’ protests have been held – on Saturday outside Government House and on Monday outside Parliament – by Caymanians and expats objecting to mandatory vaccines.

Former Premier Alden McLaughlin, in his submission on the debate on the Immigration Bill, gave a number of hypothetical examples of people he said would be impacted by the bill, such as a Jamaican family about to apply for permanent residence or a wealthy investor, who, if for any reason they could not or would not be vaccinated, would be forced to leave Cayman.

As he had noted during the debate on Monday on the Customs and Border Control (Amendment) Bill, McLaughlin said this legislation, if passed, was likely to face a judicial review.

Quoting from a Cayman Compass interview with HSM Chambers lawyer Nick Joseph, he outlined some of the legal challenges that the amended legislation could to face. He had earlier also quoted from a letter from KSG Attorneys at Law, written on behalf of its client, the Christian Association for Civics and Political Education, which also detailed areas related to the Bill of Rights that could be challenged in a court of law.

Leader of the Opposition Roy McTaggart, in his comments, urged the government to pull back the bill, stating, “Education and persuasion rather than mandating has served us very well to date.”

Attorney General: Bills are constitutionally sound

Attorney General Samuel Bulgin, who advised the government on the bills, outlined the legal standing of the bills, saying the government has a mandate to protect the people of the Cayman Islands in light of the pandemic.

“The more the community spread continues … the greater the urgency on the government to have [mandatory vaccinations],” he said, referring to a report Monday in which Public Health officials reported 38 new local cases of COVID-19.

He said there was no question that there was a “pressing social need” and sufficient justification for the government to introduce mandatory vaccinations, as any administration has the right to impose requirements on work permit holders if it is in the public interest.

He added that it was the government’s view that the vaccination measures being introduced by these bills “are quite reasonable and represent a proportional response to what is now clearly a daily growing problem that needs to be tackled head on in the most aggressive way – no room for wavering, no time for dithering”.

Saying that the measures being taken would mostly affect Cayman’s “very transient population”, he added that the government felt a court would not find the requirement for mandatory vaccines for that part of the community “untenable”. He said the bills were constitutionally sound and would “withstand legal scrutiny”.

Quarantine breaches

Premier Wayne Panton refuted suggestions made during the debate that the reason Cayman now has growing numbers of community transition is due to his government’s decision to lower the quarantine period to five days for verifiable vaccinated travellers.

While acknowledging that the source of the outbreaks had not been found, he said investigations had indicated that the original local cases had no travel history or reported contact with travellers. He said it was most likely related to people who had visited a person in quarantine and then spread the virus in the community.

The premier also maintained that community spread of the virus had occurred because people had become complacent after a year and a half of adhering to COVID-suppression rules.

In his debate submission, he said, “While there’s been a lot of criticism about pushing vaccinations, about requiring changes to the law that means that someone who is coming into the country has to be vaccinated – [someone] on a work permit who is coming in, or somebody who is here, or someone who is even a permanent resident.

“I don’t think that we should be apologising for trying our utmost to try to get the vaccinations as high as possible in this country.”

Panton: ‘Safest way forward’

He also pointed to local COVID outbreaks in Bermuda and the British Virgin Islands, saying Cayman was doing all it could to ensure that there were no local deaths or serious illnesses due to the virus here.

He accused members of the Opposition of fearmongering and undermining confidence about the vaccinations, which he noted had been administered to billions worldwide.

As of Tuesday, 3.6 billion people had received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, according to World in Data statistics.

He said maximising vaccinations in Cayman “is the safest way” to move forward with border reopening.

The premier insisted that, contrary to suggestions made by Opposition members, the government was not exercising its power to mandate vaccinations just because it can. “We have thought about these issues. In other circumstances, we would prefer not to have to think about having to do something like this, but the truth is, as high as our vaccination rate is, it needs to be maintained, and it needs to be improved.”

Cayman’s current vaccination rate is 78% of the population has received at least one dose, and 74% has received both doses.

Referring to studies that have shown the transmissibility of the Delta variation of COVID-19 is similar to that of measles, he said a 90% vaccination rate in a community was necessary to quell an outbreak of measles, and therefore it was vital that Cayman reach as high a level of vaccination as possible.

A third bill considered and passed during this special meeting of the House on Monday and Tuesday was the Coast Guard Bill which conferred legal standing on the law enforcement arm. Following the final vote on the bills Tuesday, Parliament adjourned sine die.