Hon Kurt Tibbetts Leader of Government Business	Franz Manderson Chief Immigration Officer

 

By Tad Stoner
tad@caymannetnews.com

Cabinet Ministers on Thursday detailed a wholesale restructuring of the Immigration Department’s work-permit system that will include a point system and a set of rewards and punishment for employers, to be classified into five categories.

Speaking to the press at the weekly post-Cabinet media briefings on Thursday morning, and accompanied by Chief Immigration Officer Franz Manderson, Leader of Government Business (LoGB), Hon Kurt Tibbetts, said the new “Immigration Accreditation System” was likely to gain final approval by the end of March after a public consultation, and would make it easier for qualified employers to gain work permits.

“We have had a tremendous increase in work permits … and also created a significant increase in the number of immigration offences committed,” Mr Tibbetts said, citing more than 26,000 permits in the market and growing failures by “unscrupulous” employers to pay pension and health-insurance benefits; to treat employees fairly; or to recruit, train and promote Cayamanians.

“So we have devised a system … to create progressive benefits for employers who are compliant in varying degrees. Such a system will weed out bogus employers, thereby eliminating the exploitation of foreign workers and improve work-permit processing times,” he said.

All “non-private employers” - 4,000 Cayman Islands businesses - must seek accreditation from immigration authorities prior to gaining work permits. Three teams will process the permits: one for financial services, one for tourism and one catch-all for “all other industries”.

Assessors will classify each company into one of five categories according to a points system with six broad criteria, which include licences within a particular industry, the desirability of any new businesses and the extent of profit-sharing with Caymanian ownership.

The lowest division will be “probationary”, meaning the company, while largely compliant with immigration statutes, will be limited to work-permit renewals and prohibited from designating “key employees”, expatriates with unique skills.

The second, similar, category recognises “talent development” of Caymanians, said Mr Tibbetts, “good employment practices” and participation in “community development programmes”. Tier two enables both renewals and grants of permits and key employee applications.

Like categories one and two, levels three and four are also similar, providing incentives for incremental improvement. A company will gain points for talent development and community programmes, and as members of certain business sectors and ownership. A dedicated Immigration Department account manager will make work-permit decisions within three days. For a fee, managers will expedite non-work-permit applications.

Finally, companies in the top tier will have “excellent programmes”, Mr Tibbetts said, covering talent development, employment practices and community involvement with a similar dedicated manager making decisions in three days and expediting non-permit applications for free.

Mr Manderson invited the public to view details of the new system -- including scoring criteria -- on the department website.

“We must ensure that small businesses in particular are well aware,” Mr Manderson said. “We will speak to the [Cayman Islands] Investment Bureau, the documents are on the website and next week we will publish a schedule of meetings with stakeholders and within each district.”

Meetings during the next month-and-a-half, he said, will generate a final report to Cabinet, which anticipates launching the programme by the end of the first quarter.

“For those people who are not shysters,” Mr Tibbetts said, “this is going to make life a lot easier and applications will be dealt with [promptly], which is the biggest complaint now.”

Constant monitoring will enable employers to improve their category rankings while ensuring maintenance of standards, placing the onus for compliance on business owners, according to Minister for Education and Employment with responsibility for labour, Hon. Alden McLaughlin.

“Our biggest problem has been not enough personnel to enforce the laws, but the beauty of this proposal is that it’s self-enforcing. The onus is on you [employers] to satisfy the immigration department [they] are compliant in all these things,” he said.

“This will help speed the process,” Mr Manderson said, “weed out employers who are not compliant and offer a proper reward system for good employers, who are involved in schools or prison programmes or the Pink Ladies, training our people and moving them up the ladder.”