Date: Wed 27-Sep-2000

Gov't wants rid of long-term residents Moniz

By Matthew Taylor

Government is seeking to banish long-term residents by the backdoor, Opposition MP Trevor Moniz has claimed. And he has said non-Bermudians would be reluctant to co-operate with an immigration survey which he said had been belatedly put out to gather statistics after Government launched its Green Paper on long-term residents.

Mr. Moniz told The Royal Gazette : ``I have had reports of people who have been here a long time having their permission to stay or permission to seek employment refused.'' He said one female chartered accountant who had been on the Island for about 15 years had been told by an immigration officer that ``we are trying to get rid of people like you''. ``This is the first time I heard a highly educated intelligent person say this someone who is 100 percent reliable,'' Mr. Moniz said.``The Chief Immigration officer Martin Brewer was present when this was said to her. ``Obviously many long-term residents will now be reluctant to come forward and put their head above the wall just to make themselves a target and get it shot at.

``If this is the case then the exercise is one in bad faith -- on one hand they say they want to do right but in secret they are doing wrong by these people. ``They never said this in Parliament -- is this their policy? ``If they are saying they are trying to get rid of expats I will be shocked. They never admitted that. ``They said they are going to have a new policy so new people coming in don't become long-term residents.'' But Mr. Moniz said proposals to limit work permits to a set maximum were only supposed to apply to those who had arrived in Bermuda after April 2000.

One civil servant told The Royal Gazette that he had heard Cabinet members talking openly of the need to reduce the number of non-Bermudians on the Island. Mr. Moniz also attacked Government for putting out a survey to long-term residents with little publicity. The voluntary form, put out by the Immigration office, asks long-term residents to give details about their length of stay, marital status and absences from Bermuda. Mr. Moniz questioned why there had been no press conference heralding the questionaire. He said: ``This is a major exercise and if we want to maximise the number of people filling it in then we need maximum visibility.''

Mr. Moniz also said the fact-finding was long overdue and was a tacit admission the Government didn't have hard data. He said: ``They were elected in November 1998 but in September 2000 there didn't seem to be the facts and figures.'' He praised Portuguese community leader Robert Pires for persuading Government that fact-finding was needed. Mr. Moniz said: ``It's nice to be told you are right but one sees they don't have the information to back up their decisions. ``They didn't do their homework. ``So much time has already been lost -- in the interim the long- term residents are put in a very difficult position -- there's a lot of pressure on these people.''

And Mr. Moniz mocked PLP backbencher Dale Butler for saying that foreign managers needed to take sensitivity training courses to ensure better relations with Bermudian workers. He said: ``The public meetings have been a disaster -- there are all these people coming out of the woodwork just to attack non-Bermudians. It's very disturbing. ``And then Dale Butler says that because we have all these people being obnoxious and hostile the non-Bermudians should take classes in how to be nicer. ``That was basically what he was saying. Hang on, can you run that past me again? ``The whole exercise is Orwellian -- Paula Cox said at the first meeting that all animals are equal but some are more equal than others.