Relevant Work Permit Policy Considerations

In acknowledging the link to immigration policies and the issue of dealing with Bermuda's long-term residents, the Government intends to forestall a repeat scenario of long-term residents. This is to avert a situation where as Government we are seen to be encouraging the creation of long-term residency for persons who come here as guest workers and their families.

Accordingly, there is the proposal, enunciated in the Green Paper, for a voluntary renunciation, at the outset, of any rights to long-term residency, for anyone coming to Bermuda who is subject to work permit approval. The thrust is to eliminate any misleading impression anyone might have that the grant of a work permit is a licence to put down permanent roots in Bermuda. While signing or not signing the voluntary waiver is a matter of free will, as a responsible Government it is incumbent on us to advise non-Bermudian workers that there is no intent to perpetuate a situation where they will be entitled or able to claim that they thought they would be able to stay in Bermuda indefinitely.

There is also the correlative issue of how to change the mind-set so that there is not the focus on continuing the automatic renewal of the work permits of non-Bermudian workers, without consideration of the issues of training and re-training of Bermudians.

To prevent the continued creation of long-term residents the Government in its draft work permit policies mooted the idea of term limits for those areas where employers did not have key employees. This engendered some considerable debate, most of it negative because it was said to cut off the life-blood of businesses. Many meetings and discussions were held since then with representative groups of the various business sectors in Bermuda. We are just about to respond setting out how the policies are being revised and amended. However I will focus on a couple of the issues referred to in the draft work permit policy document. One proposal was to encourage all new work permit holders to sign a voluntary waiver of any residential rights which might otherwise accrue to them through their working in Bermuda. For those who sign the waiver, length of residence will not be a factor for consideration at the time of renewal of work permits. However, those who do not sign the waiver will know that their work permits are unlikely to be extended beyond a maximum set in policy. Another proposal was to restrict the term of work permits except for those who met the criteria for "key" personnel.

It is notable that an option suggested by the United Kingdom's Home Office is that Bermuda restrict work permits to one or two years validity, certainly less than five years. This arose, as will be explained later, because of the very different attitudes towards citizenship between the United Kingdom on the one hand and the British dependent territories on the other. Limiting work permits to less than five years in total would prevent people from qualifying for British naturalisation. This suggestion

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