Changes coming to restrict status grants, says minister

(CNS): The minister responsible for immigration, Dwayne Seymour, has said the Cayman Islands Government is working on a number of amendments to legislation that Caymanians had been asking for relating to the pace of growth and “people walking onto our shores and getting status”. He said, “None of us are happy about the pace of that.”

The border control minister said the country had made mistakes in the past and there were things to fix, such as immigration, which is a “main concern”. However, he said this was taking time because the ministries were swamped, and there were “not enough bodies to do everything”.

Appearing on Radio Cayman’s For The Record with Orrett Connor on Monday, Seymour said that changes were coming to address the pace at which people were being granted permanent residency and status.

Seymour said that the growth over the last few decades had become quite stressful as Caymanians were not prepared for the opportunities brought by the “mass exodus [sic] of people coming to our country”, though it was clear he meant mass influx. “It is a mental health situation when a country grows this fast.”

He said that “most Caymanians are on the same page” about the growth, which he described as “quite scary”, and that it was clear the pace of status and PR grants had to be slowed down. He said the government had found some mechanisms it could use, though he didn’t go into detail about what those were.

Seymour implied that the focus would be on reducing the number of people getting status by making it much more difficult to qualify, putting an annual cap on grants or stopping status grants completely other than through family or marriage connections.

It already takes a minimum of 16 years of continuous residency for a person who arrives in the Cayman Islands as a work permit holder with no ties of descent or marriage to get Caymanian status, and then only if they meet all of the qualifying criteria. However, getting status through marriage can be much quicker, and twice as many people now achieve status through this route than those getting status through residency.

“We are working on a lot but… when you are working on a lot… sometimes you have got to pick which one you are going to move forward with because you can’t get it all done at one time,” he said.

Seymour has been labour minister since March 2023, except for one month after he resigned from the PACT Cabinet. He returned to the ministry in the UPM administration after Panton was ousted from office.

He and his predecessor, Chris Saunders, have been pressured through the courts and by Cabinet colleagues over the last three and a half years. However, despite promises to deal with the issues surrounding labour and immigration, as well as reviews and reports, there has been no significant change.

Seymour, who owns a security and baggage handling business that employs a significant number of permit holders on minimum wage, has failed to raise the minimum wage, which many believe would slow down the influx of foreign labour. The minister, who clearly has a conflict of interest, rejected the Minimum Wage Advisory Committee’s recommendations that it should be increased from the current $6 per hour to $8.75, with room for even more in the business community.

In July this year, he announced there would be a do-over of the process and that he wanted the committee to look at different rates for different sectors. In the meantime, he announced that in July next year, tourism workers would get an increase to just $7 per hour and that employers would no longer be able to use gratuities to supplement wages.

When Connor asked the minister about the situation with the minimum wage on Monday, he appeared to accept that all the issues were connected and said he had plans to implement a minimum wage. Ignoring his own role in stalling the rollout of the national pay hike, he said, “We should have had an increase in the minimum wage a long time ago… and I am doing my best to ensure it happens and is approved under this government.”

Seymour added that he would return to the show this week with his ministry team when he would address the minimum wage question.

See Minister Seymour’s appearance on FTR on Radio Cayman’s YouTube channel below: