Nepalese emerge as fifth largest group of permit holders

(CNS): At the end of 2018, there were 385 work permit holders in the Cayman Islands from the Himalayan Kingdom of Nepal, but over the last six years, this number has more than tripled. Updated statistics released by WORC reveal that, as of 1 July, there were 1,245 Nepalese workers here, and they now make up the fifth largest group of overseas workers, just behind the British and ahead of Canadians.

According to the latest statistics, there are 37,309 work permit holders in total. This is down slightly from April’s record-breaking high of 37,437, reflecting the seasonal slowdown in the hospitality sector and unlikely to be a trend of decline.

While permit holders hail from over 130 different countries, the significant number from Nepal indicates an emerging change in migrant worker demographics. Over half of the 337 permits granted during the second quarter of 2024 were for Nepalese workers.

Despite the need for the government to understand work permit demographics in order to improve the much-criticised permit, residency and status systems, there is almost no data available to the public about such trends and possible reasons for sudden upticks in permit holders from a specific nation.

According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), more than 1,600 Nepalese, mostly men, leave their homeland every day now to find employment overseas, largely as a result of the country’s stalled economy since the pandemic. Push factors are also rooted in the political-economic situation, as well as the impact of climate change and natural disasters that are making local livelihoods like farming precarious. But the pull factors, to Cayman in particular, are less clear.

Most Nepalese migrants head for Malaysia or the Middle East. While the number coming to Cayman is tiny in comparison, it may indicate a new pattern here, where there is a tendency for employers to offer work to their existing workers’ friends and family members from their home countries rather than looking elsewhere or trying to find local workers.

The stated aim of successive governments in the Cayman Islands has been to have a diverse range of nationalities among permit holders to address local concerns about the dominance of one nationality. However, Jamaicans continue to make up by far the largest group, as they have for decades, which is unsurprising given the neighbouring island’s history with Cayman and the many direct connections.

The immigration system is designed to make it harder for work permit holders from the larger nationality groups to achieve permanent residency by reducing or eliminating the points awarded on the application to people from those countries.

Jamaicans and Filipinos, the two largest groups (15,404 and 6,460, respectively), don’t get any points at all for their nationality. India nationals, the third largest group with 2,092, and people from the UK (just over 2,000) get just five points, while applicants from all other countries are awarded ten points, as they account for less than 5% of the overall permit numbers.

This means that people from Nepal can still claim ten points if they make a permanent residency application. But, as has been the case for workers coming from India, if the rapid increase in Nepalese migrant workers continues, the points awarded for nationality will decline.

The whole point system has been heavily criticised and has been the basis for many successful legal challenges by PR applicants. In August 2022, local lawyer Steve McField was appointed to head a team of experts to review the points system.

However, it is not known when the results of this committee’s work will be made public or if the government has any real intentions to address immigration issues, especially the road to Caymanian status, something Labour Minister Dwayne Seymour told parliament this week he wants to make much harder to acquire.

According to numbers released through an FOI request by the local law firm HSM and circulated to their clients last week, the immigration boards and administrative staff at WORC have recently picked up the pace of dealing with Right to be Caymanian (RTBC) applications, while new applications appear to be decreasing.

In May 2024, the Caymanian Status and Permanent Residncy Board determined 71 applications for status on the basis of naturalisation and 107 on the basis of marriage. “In that period of time there were only 38 RTBC applications on the basis of naturalisation submitted and 39 applications on the basis of marriage submitted,” the lawyers at HSM said in their circular.

“This suggests the Board is currently concluding far more applications than are currently being submitted and, accordingly, applicants for Caymanian Status may find the wait time for determinations reducing significantly from the position in January 2024 when it reached almost two years to an average of approximately 15 months,” the lawyers added.