EDITORIAL

Migrants helped in our success

Thursday,  August 11, 2005

One of the most important things that has contributed to this country’s on-going economic success, is the Cayman Islands’ ability to attract workers from all over the world.

Within the financial services sector we have attracted some of the best professional talent on the international scene; in the tourist industry we employ some of the best chefs and hotel specialists from all five continents. And right now, in the construction and development sector we have architects, developers and engineers bringing their skills from the world over.

Aside from the unbelievably talented professional experts, we also attract a lot of unskilled labour – people willing to clean floors, carry cement blocks, serve food and fill gas tanks with a smile on their faces, because, after all this is a great place to live and work even if it does mean collecting garbage or cleaning washrooms for a living.

The pressing need for us to continue recruiting overseas workers boils down to the simple fact that our economy is far bigger than the indigenous population can sustain and for this country to continue to be one of the most affluent countries in the world, we desperately need to keep on attracting both the cream of the professional crop and those willing to do the less than glamorous roles that are equally important to keeping our economy successful.

Yet collectively people here do not always offer the warmest welcome to those from other countries, who sometimes follow different cultural practices, believe in different things and speak another language among themselves.

The stranger or in our case the immigrant worker is not always as welcome as he or indeed she should be.

This phenomena is not unique to Cayman however; strangers are often unwelcome even when their contribution to the success of an economy is fundamental.

The people that emigrated from the Caribbean that went to Europe and in particular the United Kingdom in the 1950s were crucial to Britain’s economic recovery in the wake of World War Two.

However in most cases they were far from welcome and were blamed for a whole host of societal ills and became the victims of terrible racist attacks, all because they were different.

Right now in the wake of rising crime, the strangers or foreigners that have been invited here to fulfil crucial roles in our society are being blamed for the numerous ills and the increase in anti-social behaviour we are experiencing.

Regardless of the evidence to the contrary from both the prison population and the statistics relating to the number of foreign nationals compared to locals, it seems easier to blame the immigrant than our own.
The “send them home message,” a scourge on so many societies is also in our case a rather ridiculous one. Were we to ‘send them home’ who indeed would then be collecting garbage, cleaning washrooms or filling gas tanks? Or indeed running the offshore financial sector or keeping the tourists entertained and fed?

This country desperately needs immigrant workers to grow and develop. It is time for all of us to offer a warm welcome to anyone who has chosen our beloved country to come to live and work and contribute to our success.

It is time to accept the fact that we could not be the success we have become without the imported workers who continue to serve this country well.

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