Please publish the constitution also

Monday, July 3, 2006

Dear Sir:

"The movement of people across the world has become an unstoppable force and the Cayman Islands should seek to embrace the incredible advantages that attracting a culturally diverse workforce offers and address the looming exodus before this country's economy is irreversibly damaged."

Yes I agree wholeheartedly with that and with people getting residence and status also, and to me I think that as long as the person applying for residence or status is not and has not been a violator of the laws of the country with all rights and accommodations that person should be granted the rights of the case.

But, ladies and gentlemen are we still doing it right when we issue residency or status to people who have not fulfilled the requirement of the law?  Remember there is a constitution that is involved in this aspect, or has everybody forgotten that exists as well?

It appears so if we are giving status or residence to people who have spent three and four years in the country and if there is a fact to the constitution having laid out that a person needs to reside in the country for ten years before status or residency can be granted to them, obviously we don't care about the constitution do we?

To really clarify this whole thing, why don't we do with the constitution the way we did with the MOU with Cuba? Publish it. Then maybe there will not be so many people with hard feelings and also people will see where their rights are.

The constitution is supposed to be the highest law in any given country and yet the government seems to be ignoring that to the highest level. Yes, what have we come to here? Then again, we can no longer allow the xenophobes permeating our society to be the ones that dictate policy when it comes to nurturing our workforce, No.

But there are rights and wrongs in the way we do things and if someone sees that something is being done wrong and speaks about the incident/s, then is that person wrong for ridiculing the way in which the incident was done?

On the other hand, if the said person sees that the incident/s were done right and ridicules the incident, then is that person right  for his/her ridicule? I personally would think "No" would be the answer for both questions.

Let us be straight forward with the people (expatriates) and then there will not be any malice on either, the Caymanian or ex-pat. This would surely help to go some way to meet the needs of both sides of the debate.

With the constitution published and the people able to read and understand the contents thereof, those who have an aversion to foreigners being made Caymanian would be placated, but the fundamental day-to-day rights issues concerning expatriates establishing a home with their families and settling here would be dealt with, should we deal in an honest, fair and law-abiding way.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for reading my take on this matter.

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