Global Citizen launch conflicts with travel rules
(CNS): The Global Citizen initiative to woo rich, working visitors for a two-year stay was formally launched yesterday, but it seems the programme is in conflict with the current inbound travel rules. The categories of people who may enter the Cayman Islands are still restricted to Caymanians, residents, workers, students, property owners and relatives, and new applications to enter remain closed to these groups until Monday.
But according to a Department of Tourism press release, wealthy visitors who fit the criteria and pay the fees can now apply to enter Cayman. While the DoT’s website is inviting applications, residents of Cayman and other groups that are already allowed to enter and who are applying via the Travel Cayman portal have been told not to apply until next week, when the remaining capacity for people returning in November will be released.
Officials have said that inbound travel is being carefully managed to ensure that seats on flights match the capacity for the government’s quarantine and paid-for private quarantine facilities, as well as the geo-fencing programme for home-isolation.
In the press release promoting the programme for wealthy long-stay visitors, which is being run by the DoT, it is not clear how it will fit with the current management of what officials say is still only for essential inward travel.
The Global Citizens Programme has been created to inch open the tourism sector and is similar to other programmes in the region. But it has already raised considerable controversy here because of the potential loopholes that could allow people to circumvent immigration and work permit rules.
It now also appears that those wanting to take advantage of the programme may be given priority over residents and property owners, many of whom have been waiting to come back for months.
CNS has submitted a number of questions about the programme and how it fits with the current management of inbound travellers, which has increased significantly this month with the first phase of the border reopening. We are currently awaiting a response.
There are currently more than 730 people in quarantine or home isolation, which has increased the potential risk to the community of exposure to COVID-19 from travellers carrying the virus. Public health officials are already reporting high viral loads in those testing positive. This is not surprising as most of those flying into Cayman are doing so from countries where the coronavirus pandemic is not under control.
So far there has been only one confirmed breach of home-isolation. However, the higher viral loads in incoming travellers testing positive and the increase in people returning has raised the risk of exposure for front-line air crews, airport workers, border control, and those managing the quarantine and isolation programmes.
In the press release from the DoT, officials stated that the borders here remained “closed to commercial airlift and cruise traffic” but government had nevertheless “officially” launched the Global Citizen Concierge Programme (GCCP), described as a “tourism initiative designed for digital nomads looking to take advantage of the flexibility provided by remote work”.
The release said eligible professionals and their families can upgrade their home offices by choosing to live and work remotely in the Cayman Islands for up to two years by acquiring a Global Citizen Certificate.
“Global Citizen Concierge provides the perfect opportunity for remote workers to live the life of their dreams on our idyllic shores and amongst our Caymankind people,” Tourism Minister Moses Kirkconnell said Wednesday in the release announcing the official launch.
“Our government has been successful in the face of the global health crisis and we’ve emerged as a safe haven in the Caribbean. Now more than ever, businesses are embracing the flexibility of digital existence, with many employees seeking a change of scenery and lifestyle. Remote workers can now spend up to two years living and working in the Cayman Islands – reinvigorating their nine-to-five schedules with Caymankindness and elevating their work-life balance with sun, sand, sea and safety in Cayman.”
First the virus will be around for years
Second take care of people elderly
Third when it arrives in cayman and it will people will get sick and some will die
Fourth cayman can’t continue with the silly back and forth. Open close open close if closed prepare for 3 years and do it
Fifth Dr Lee has everyone scared and Governor if listening to GB politicians who know zero
Sixth stay safe and remember this only effects the elderly and vulnerable with pre existing conditions—the rest plan to be healthy and watch cayman run out of money
12:06
It’s refreshing to read a sensible post here. Everything written is reality. Anyone who thinks the island will be kept “safer”, needs to define what that means:
A) we will keep it from coming back here and eradicate it all together. (delusional, take a science class and stop listening to sheep herders)
B) we will wait for a cure with vaccines (well, the world is full of educated derelicts too).
C) it’s a virus, and just like bacteria, viruses have existed since the dinosaurs. Man-made or not, it’s here to stay, and we have to adapt to it….not vice-versa. BINGO!!!
The best that can be done are preventive measures to slow it down, JUST LIKE THE “REGULAR” FLU, and a strategy in place with resources.
Watched the Chamber presentation from DOT today. Couple of gems. First, when asked about flight capacity to deal with demand, response was that the initiative was aimed at the private jet class. Really, with a $100K threshold. And then the joy of seeing the definition of those entitled to enter including the spouse or civil partner! Has anyone told Anthony Eden!!!
If they have the money for this program, a stipulation of entry should be quarantine at the Ritz at their expense. It’ll keep them controlled, help put some cash into the ritz and make sure that folks coming here have what they say they do for cash on hand. And on top of that it’s a good place to stay for such travelers while they quarantine. No sense in risking them home shopping while “under quarantine”
100K isn’t really all that much for a salary if you are all looking for the rich traveler.
No one is coming to stay at your Rikers Island Ritz.
Affluent folk will not pay to stay for 2 weeks in a tiny room when they got plenty of options elsewhere.
The Global Citizen initiative is DOA until the 2 week quarantine is relaxed.
Numbers will be WAY lower than CIG/DoT forecasts…
Great! We prefer not have anymore Covid here. Stay right where you are.The CIG supports this not the people of the Cayman Islands.
The people of cayman should have better leaders so you’re not being lied to. EVERYONE has to “get it”. Believe not, then I guess you’re the exception in human evolution. NOT
4:32
What will the people of the Cayman Islands do when you’re out of money and at the complete mercy of your elected dopes?
Fruit trees and chickens baby..
I never tasted one these road runners. Any tips for cooking them?
Win-win for everyone. Maybe Michael Ryan can use that money to finally pay back Government for all those concessions and money-back rebates, currently footed by the community. (And any relevant Ombudsman investigation that can follow up)
Reality check:
Besides the people that either work here or have property here, NO ONE is coming to the Cayman Islands as a tourist and go through quarantine when they can go to place like Europe with no quarantine whatsoever.
Tourism and ALL of the businesses, industries surrounding tourism is DEAD for the foreseeable future.
If you livelihood depends on tourism, you better get in the government line for money because it’s not coming back.
Alden made sure of it.
Europe is heading into full lockdown. Quarantine is much easier than that!
No it isn’t trust me. I’m an HNW in Europe now and I ain’t coming with my family until post quarantine
Lockdown restrictions are piece of cake compared to being shut in a tiny ass room / condo for a minimum of 16 days…
So rent a villa on the beach with its own pool. That too small for you? Enjoy the cold (and mask wearing).
Great! Stay there! Your covid numbers are going through the roof and we don’t need that crap here..
The Dart spells have finally been revealed!!!! Please give these politicians the antidote.
Gerontocracy devours its children.
One of the most amazing aspects of the global response to the coronavirus has been the total refusal to classify and treat populations according to age-related risk.
Although Covid-19 can be quite deadly , it poses a fairly minor risk for people under fifty.
For those under thirty, the risks associated with lockdowns—increased domestic abuse, suicide, depression, drug abuse, economic hardship—are almost certainly worse than the disease itself.
There are of course exceptions (e.g., young people with compromised immune systems, old people who have already had the virus), but these are easily accounted for.
Yet the gerontocrats who set policies are apparently unable to even consider these factors.
Instead of imposing blanket lockdowns and quarantines on everyone, it would have made far more sense to isolate the elderly, while allowing those under fifty to work, and have real lives.
Policymakers pretend that there is no difference between a thirty-year-old and a seventy-year-old. Why? Perhaps because baby boomers cannot imagine the world existing without them? Because they can’t even conceive of the existence of anyone but themselves?
One statistic not readily available is the number of young people’s lives that have been stifled or destroyed to preserve the precious egos—and assets—of the boomer generation, both now and over the past few decades.
The aging of science.
The effects of these perverse generational dynamics are not just economic. Fittingly, perhaps, they are most pronounced in the realm of science, even the science of viruses. To quote the principle named for Max Planck, “Science progresses one funeral at a time.”
«A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. . . . An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out, and that the growing generation is familiarized with the ideas from the beginning: another instance of the fact that the future lies with the youth.»
As long as senior figures remain in their positions, articles challenging their theories are unlikely to make it past peer review.
The specific problems of scientific gerontocracy, however, are perhaps best epitomized by the seventy-nine-year-old Dr. Anthony Fauci, who had bizarrely emerged as a media hero and “America’s foremost infectious disease expert” .
His glaring failures should have chastened him—or provoked his resignation—but it seems to have only fed his hunger for the spotlight and another fawning profile.
The same can be said for the rest of the gerontocracy—in politics, business, academia, and beyond. For the boomers and near-boomers, the decisions they made during their prime were mostly terrible, and their record during their twilight is even worse. It is time for younger people—that is, people of normal working age—to take over these positions.
It is dangerous and irresponsible to have almost every important office filled by the population cohort most susceptible to being wiped out by a pandemic. In addition to adjusting lockdowns and quarantines to account for age, mandatory retirement policies should be instituted.
Anyone too old to drive on a busy highway should probably not be trusted to run the country’s most important institutions in a time of crisis.
No one likes to admit it, but politics follows Planck’s principle, too.
CNS: Sourced from American Affairs.
Terrific post!
Even if it is posted without proper citation 😉
Who is going to monitor all of these people to ensure they abide by the rules? Have we thought this through..well guessing from this article, Moses needs to see a shrink.
Fake news!
It will only take one superspreader to break the rules and Cayman is gone to hell. I know the economy needs growth but this is not the way. If we have to go into lockdown again, I’m going to see Alden and Moses and give them a piece of my mind..I am so stressed out right now because of this and that would certainly push me over the edge.
Alden and Moses would burn water if you asked them to boil it..You can’t make this crap up..I would love to know who puts these plans together for them.
DART
So our own citizens have been demoted to 2nd class just so our cloud 9 headed leaders can open the floodgates for a few infected with $$. This is it, they all really must be purged from our government along with the DG. The bad mindedness is stacking up very fast against these imbeciles. Make your vote count for anyone other than this bunch of morons next year.
I agree – all expats should go home immediately so we can go back to growing bananas and mangoes
This is starting to be a real hot mess.
Open in July. Closed in July. Open in August. Closed in August. Maybe September, October, November…Maybe 2021??? Come, don’t come, bio button, no bio button, open, shut, open, shut, only If you have 2 billions, nope only if you have 1 billion dollars, maybe casinos, no casinos, resort bubbles, no resort bubbles, government quarantine, home quarantine…global citizen….oh, not yet you global citizens….and so it goes…..
And still no local resident CVD-19 related deaths….
Boi u are a right cupcake-sounding ball of fun😁
Wealthy snowbirds that can’t/won’t rusk going to southern states for their usual 6 winter months this season, a real high-spend demographic, aren’t even on the radar of DoT. That’s because they don’t have solutions for an industry they don’t understand. False starts and misfires are symptoms of people trusted to operate beyond their headspace.
👍👍🙈🙉🙊
Let’s pave the way for the rich while the rest of us lose all our livelihoods.
Unless you pave that road your livelihoods are gone for sure…
Might as well find a red carpet long enough!
BA put us on a repatriation flight to Cayman even though we didn’t meet current criteria. On speaking to them they said Cayman flights were not cancelled and in fact if you go on the website you can book a seat on any one of 4 flights a week. What’s going on behind the scenes with CiG, FCO and BA?
2.30pm Thank you for letting us know. So are you on vacation as a tourist and now in quarantine or visiting family? Just asking so we can find out what is really going on. LFour flights a week? Hope you enjoy, best time of year weatherwise!
BA left hand has no clue what right hand is doing. A week ago I asked about the schedule of flights and whether the flights would stop in Nassau either way, and they had no clue. Zero.
BA aren’t in the business of being the gatekeeper for Cayman, or anywhere else in the world. They rely on the traveler to have all the paperwork in place of whether they are allowed to travel, they can abide by the rules countries put in place, like requiring a return ticket, or having a travel visa, but at the point of booking that can’t be determined, so they will take your booking (and money) and sort it out later.
We too were put on the repatriation flight by BA. And you’re right about being able to book seats. They haven’t got a clue. But not to worry if you’re mega rich the rules don’t apply to you
Most jurisdictions, both large and small, are moving towards rapid tests at point of entry. Also doing away with the draconian and ineffective 15 day quarantine. So tell me CIG what are your plans?
Ineffective? How? When we have caught over 20 cases of Covid before they have made it into the community though quarantining people coming in. If you don’t like it, then don’t come here. There are many other destinations. We value our people and their safely.
Keep it pushing if you don’t. Simple.
But how many where caught on arrival? You don’t know!
If they where tested before they departed they would not be here if they where positive.
Our system is not the way forward and we can not live this way for ever or even 2022 when we may see some effectiveness of a vaccine.
Have you ever googled “Incubation Period”?
Our system is very good. Long may it continue. As long as our rules are in place and are followed, we and our society are safe.
I am not prepared to endure another lockdown and have my kids unable to attend school, so someone can come on a vacation or does not want to quarantine to play their part in keeping our islands safe.
Time and time again we are told that it takes up to 14 days for the virus to show itself.
Testing, testing and more testing, that is the solution. The Bermuda model is working. They have tested over 500K more persons and they have an infection rate lower than Cayman. Just checkout line item 191 for Bermuda on https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
and then line item 188 for Cayman. This site is updated daily.
Their strategy of testing, testing and then more testing is simply working. Cayman cannot continue to live in an unrealistic bubble when knowing full well that COVID-19 is not going to disappear, we simply must learn how to live with it. Take the necessary precautions to protect the vulnerable, etc.
Have you spent much time in Bermuda? Residents and visitors don’t mix as much as in Cayman and there are other cultural differences. The Bermuda strategy would not work well in the Cayman Islands.
Absolutely beyond me why the Bermuda strategy will not work here having lived in both places. Caymanians have far more in common with Bermuda than they like to admit. We can learn from them.
Barbados based their opening strategy for tourism implemented last month, on the Bermuda model. Bermuda must be doing something right.
The main cultural difference is that Bermuda does not have a lot of Jamaicans living on the island. Everything else is similar, except for a better bus transportation system, better waste disposal and a far better Canadian built futuristic airport than our airport.
Plan is to stay safe, avoid the virus moving into the community and avoidIng another lockdown. Most places are spiking and locking down again. No thank you.
civil service can’t go 5 mins without messing up something….
more awards franzie!!!
1:50. Boy Franzie got you going well. Poor you.
Boi u thin-skinned 😳
7:12. Who? You?
World Class, no doubt about it.
More $1000 check coming for civil servants for not doing their job…Franz get the check book out..
Give them another raise.
Cue the circus music as the clowns come out to do their routine.
Seriously, you can’t make this stuff up. I would laugh if it wasn’t so tragic for so many people who have family in CI, for people who have been stranded, and for those who have property in CI.
CIG putting some figment of their imagination in line ahead of all the real people, the people who have been begging to come back. God help us – the CIG certainly has no idea of who supports the CI with real dollars.
Except they are not visitors. The regulations confirm that anyone who holds the Certificate, and their dependents, are residents. Accordingly, once granted, they can come.
Yeah. You could be born here or lived here for a 5 years to gets status and have the same right to enter as some dude in Palm Beach who flipped CIG $1280. Sounds reasonable. I knew our island was for sale – didn’t realize it was that cheap.
Your island has been for sale since the 90’s. Where U been?
#worldclass