Changes coming to restrict status grants, says minister

| 30/10/2024 | 72 Comments
Minister Dwayne Seymour on Radio Cayman on Monday

(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:


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Category: Policy, Politics

Comments (72)

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  1. Anonymous says:

    Love how the assumption is that everybody wants to become Caymanian. In fact, a lot of professional expats would have no intention of doing that, but are forced to make a choice to apply for PR or leave after 8 years. Nobody, and I mean absolutely nobody including Caymanians, wants to retire in the Cayman Islands. Current immigrants are mainly from third world countries, because of the local demand for the cheapest available workers. They have nowhere else to go, once settled in the Cayman Islands. They also take no job from Caymanians, they serve Caymanians but Caymanians don’t like to see them around. The current delusion is that Grand Cayman is competing with Montecarlo or Dubai, while in reality being a remote protectorate of the Philippines. Caymanians also love women from the Philippines, but get upset when their children are used as a loophole to get citizenship. But hey, Grand Cayman is the last place in the world where condoms have to be kept behind the counter: changing that would help a lot reducing new citizenships… Restrict the rules as much as you like, the situation is much more complex than you are able/willing to see. You will keep losing the ‘good’ professional expats from advanced counteies, and slip even more toward the third word. And for God’s sake, approve Starlink, even Burundi has got it already!

  2. Anonymous says:

    The immigration rollover system is designed so that if an employee wants to stay, or employer wants to retain their talent, there are deadlines, applications that must be filed, applications to be lost and/or work furloughed by vengeful politics, with same fees paid, whether or not that person seeks Caymanian status. There is no other expedited “we don’t want, or need that” lane. That’s where this went off the tracks years ago. There is no “Finance Career” residency token for sale to replace the year by year work permit system with medium term temporary residency security with which to invest in real estate, own a business, and make adult plans.

  3. Anonymous says:

    See you in court morons.

  4. Anonymous says:

    Looking forward to the data to back up this stance, rather than anecdotal soundbites. From what I can see on the ESO website the number of Caymanians has grown since 2005 from 32k to 38k and the total population has gone from 52k to 82k. So Caymanians are up 18%, including births/deaths/marriages/status, total population up 58%. What number is it that worries people, is it that there are too many people generally, roads, schools, hospitals etc all stretched? Would shaving 1k off the status grants make any difference to those issues? Do you want to limit the speed of growth and thereby accept less money and opportunities? They are important choices to be made, and in my opinion should be made, just with eyes open. I would prefer less growth (and people) if it means a better quality of life, I would prefer more Caymanians and less WPs, with a view to having less population overall. I don’t think swapping people who have invested time and money with temporary WP holders is the right choice. I also think anyone who does get status should be a net benefit to the country and not a drain on resources.

  5. Anonymous says:

    This is the same donkey that gave us daily updates in the languages of this country’s expats during COVID.

  6. Anonymous says:

    dwayne…why you dont tell yhe ppl about the 7.5% tax the govt levies as of march 1st 2024 on title changes ordered by the courts in marriage? it was 100 bucks prior….so the govt want ppl to remain miserable in marriage..as most ppl cant afford to get divorce with that tax?

  7. Anonymous says:

    you have no rights in cayman outside you married! but dwayne…adultery is not a crime in the law? why us this? even in marriage! therefore, i see it as only a way of signing a finanvial contract to invite the government into your lives…whivh…in divorce…oh well…it not usually pretty?!

  8. Anonymous says:

    Cometh the Age of the Donkey.

  9. Anonymous says:

    Lol. In that case what is likely to happen is another order from UK and a lots of status grants.

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    • Anonymous says:

      There never was an order from the UK – but yes. Cayman had better manage the issue properly, or it will lose the choice of who gets to stay. This is why enforcing term limits is so important and why the civil service ongoing insistence to be exempt, is becoming questionable.

    • Anonymous says:

      There was no order from the UK, not even a hint of an order. That was just one of McKeeva’s many lies saying that if we didn’t give the people status that the UK government would force it upon us and it would be worse than the 5,000 freebies the government of the day handed out.
      The UK still doesn’t want to give citizenship to the thousands of Caribbean people who entered the UK as “windrush” workers after WW2.

  10. Anonymous says:

    Thank goodness for Honorable Seymour as he will sort everything out. You should not print fake news that his company only pays minimum wage because he is a wonderful man. We all love you Honorable Seymour, you be our next premier.

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  11. Anonymous says:

    It’s been shown time and time again that the higher the work permits, the lower the unemployment of Caymanians. Like it or not that’s the fact and that’s the fact in almost every country. Jump up and down all you want or accept it like an adult

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  12. Anonymous says:

    Premier Juliana O’Connor Connolly wants more power over finances. Illiteral in finances, economics and business she will bankrupt Cayman at the speed of light.

    Why does anyone want live in Cayman? Name one thing please.

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  13. Anonymous says:

    Who in the world wants to live in Cayman permanently?

    P.S Juliana has gotten some bold ideas in Samoa. Fasten your seatbelts, The Lady With a Suitcase full of cash wants to spend more!

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  14. Anonymous says:

    “Security, you nuh see nuttin’.” – I think that’s John-John’s way of dealing with expats on minimum wage?

  15. Anonymous says:

    I mean to be fair it’s pretty obvious that janitors and security guards shouldn’t be exempt from rollover. Doctors, teachers, financial services people less so.

  16. Anonymous says:

    Status grants aren’t really the problem when we’re talking about population growth. I think most people would agree that there should be some path to status for people to encourage them to settle here and integrate into the community. We’re taking about a few hundred people a year which is a drop in the bucket compared to the number of work permits given out.

    If the changes the Minister is proposing are made there will no doubt be issues with litigation, human rights etc, but, perhaps unsurprisingly, the government is trying to solve its problems in the wrong way. They can slow population growth much more easily and by methods that will create much less social disharmony.

    The PR points based system is already in existence. Why not simply amend this to make obtaining PR much harder? The legal framework is already in place. If fewer people achieve PR then there are obviously fewer who ultimately obtain status. It also avoids moving the goalposts for people who have already achieved it.

    And of course no discussion of solving a more serious problem – people obtaining status quickly by marriage. Sometimes by sham marriage. Why not make it 15 years before you can apply for status as a result of marriage? Why should it be shorter than the other route? We already don’t collect PR or work permit fees from those people so again they have an unfair advantage over other residents and cost the government revenue. People who get married should do so for the right reasons and a quick path to status shouldn’t be one of them.

    Finally, the sheer number of people arriving on work permits needs to be curtailed. One way to do that would be to eliminate temporary permits leading to full grants. These simply allow people to be brought here quickly and without the same level of scrutiny and application of mechanisms to protect Caymanians that is supposed to happen on a multi year grant. A temp permit should be just that – temporary. You’re here for six or nine months and that’s it. You want to come back, sure, you can get one more temp after a 3 month break or after 6 months off island you can apply for a grant. Why should we roll out the red carpet and make it easy for people to come here on a dirt cheap permit with no job and then use their time here to look for work? This happens all the time now.

    We can stop programs like the SEZ which allow shortcuts around the usual immigration controls and who does this benefit other than a few connected Caymanians? The whole island is already a special economic zone. There are no taxes. That’s the selling point. The entire premise of Enterprise City is that it reduces normal immigration costs and provides automatic 5 year permits.

    You want to slow development to a more manageable pace? Make construction permits more expensive and have a higher minimum wage. Do more spot checks to make sure people are working in the jobs they say they are. This will naturally slow down the number of projects and, thankfully, the number of Honda Fit drivers cruising around at breakneck speed.

    Raise the price of PR by investment and don’t allow it to be a path to status as it is now.

    Some or all of these changes would immediately get results that Caymanians want without breeding the kind of social disharmony that plagues many of our Caribbean neighbours. The absence of that is a big part of what makes this place so great and so successful at the expense of the economies of those other countries.

  17. Anonymous says:

    Wow isn’t this called racism in the western world?

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  18. Anonymous says:

    He who casts the first stone. Difficult to take a man seriously, even when making reseaonble points, pretending to be a paragon if virtue. Those who know, know. Those who suspect, you’re most likely correct. 🫢

  19. B says:

    Wonderful news!!!!! You’ve hot my vote

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  20. Anonymous says:

    “mass exodus [sic] of people coming to our country”.

    This is the level of education of our acting Premier and people are asking why we need work permits?

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    • Anonymous says:

      You need to listen to more Marley. The Hon. Minister was referring to Exodus! Movement of Jah People (to Cayman).

  21. Anonymous says:

    Who dat?

  22. LaQueefda says:

    Dat’s exactly why they call him da Rock!
    Where would we be without Dwayne da Rock Seymour true man of the people a trailblazer. I sleep well knowing da Rock his guiding da Cayman ship hands on da steering wheel to greener pastures. Tanks Rock tanks a lot.

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  23. Anonymous says:

    The third world work permits need to be stopped. Plus the idea of “rollover” needs to end too. It should be one 5 year work permit within a 10 year period. Cayman isn’t obligated to provide an alternative home for anyone.

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  24. Anonymous says:

    go ahead and try….cig will be humiliated again in the courts.

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  25. Anonymous says:

    what an idiot.nothing more to be said.
    cayman is lucky to have ppl wanting to stay with morons like him in power.

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  26. Anonymous says:

    jon-jon….the perfect example of why we need more new caymanians here…

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  27. Anonymous says:

    John John the moon isn’t full and we know this garbage you are spewing. Nothing will ever change until the S#$t hits the fan!!

    It election time and we know you trying make us drink the kool aid!

  28. Anonymous says:

    Minister. Respectfully, that is not how it works.

    If you want to dam a river you have to do it upstream. Not at the mouth. Doing as you propose will not only not work – it will result in a flood (of lawsuits).

    If only term limits were enforced, including in the civil service, and the PR system were fixed, you would be half way there.

    Then you would have to deal with marriages of convenience, and the ridiculous grants to people on the basis of marriage alone (without any assimilation or even spending any real time here). How are the prosecutions coming in relation to the 236 (or so) sham marriages that were identified under Minister Saunders? It has only been two years.

    Oh, and that stuff about this being too complicated for the civil services to deal with in a hurry? Really? Is that what you are being told? Seems incredible, especially given the defects in the system have been well known and litigated for more than 10 years.

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  29. Anonymous says:

    The Board has the power to restrict criteria to make it much more selective to ever qualify for PR. That’s really all they can do, but they might want to check with employers and their staff retention goals and hiring costs before fiddling with those dials. Naturalisation as BOTC comes after applying beyond 10 years, and CI Status after 15. Those folks have legitimately been contributing and investing as specified to our own exacting requirements for a big chunk of their adult lives, and at that point, unless they’ve fouled their own record somewhere, we don’t have a UNHR leg to stand on to refuse them. They are already on that track. It would be nice if we were more careful with our spending and benefits giveaways so it wouldn’t matter who’s Caymanian. Immigration might consider reading the inbound flight manifests and adding a couple more Caymanian Immigration lanes at the airport to help prioritize those who are truly our own, returning home after a long travel day. The Caymanian line is sometimes much longer than the tourist one! It shouldn’t be that way. We need to admit when we have easy things wrong, and fix them. It might be time to change the monarch pictures, for example.

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    • Anonymous says:

      The Board has no power to restrict PR. They are bound by an incomprehensibly defective points system prescribed by cabinet. There should be an investigation as to how it came to be, and how it has been allowed to continue. Cayman has been betrayed.

  30. Anonymous says:

    Election time that’s why.

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  31. Over so many people says:

    focus on bot letting
    people here on permits too not just those getting status.. we are FULL!

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  32. Anonymous says:

    First thing is that the minimum investment required for “residency by investment” needs to change from $2.5M to $10M. That $2.5M number hasn’t changed in 14 years! So you can come buy a nice house now and get residency.

    Easy peasy change.

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    • Anonymous says:

      Is this going to stop the “right” type of people? I think the people we are talking about aren’t buying 2.5M homes.

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  33. Anonymous says:

    populist waffle….you’ll do nothin’.

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    • Anonymous says:

      But you’ll lead your BTW, BTE, GTC and WBW voters to believe they’ll be getting preferential treatment.

  34. Anonymous says:

    In my opinion, the bigger problem is the large volume of disposable minimum wage foreign workers brought here and being treated badly by employers. Just the sheer volume of people here on WPs not the relative few that are becoming Caymanian. We have a bulk immigration problem.

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    • Anonymous says:

      Agreed. They don’t want to do the dirty work of actually going through the list of WP holders and seeing if that person has gainful employment. They don’t want to fine employers that have WP holders with no jobs. They need to license all rental accommodations and make sure they are to code. We could easily remove 5,000 workers on permits.

    • Anonymous says:

      Hundreds are becoming Caymanian. Thousands of their children will become Caymanian.

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  35. Anonymous says:

    So we on permits will come, work at the jobs Caymanians don’t want, make lives and contribute, build the buildings, clean the toilets, guard and keep you safe as you sleep and then you’ll throw us out as we come to rollover?

    Cayman kind indeed.

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    • Anonymous says:

      “work at the jobs Caymanians don’t want to work for unlivable wages, because they can’t take that money back home in a few short years and live like kings due to the amazing value of the KYD”

      *FTFY.

      Also, keep us safe at night? Hilarious. Our crime has skyrocketed right alongside the throngs of impoverished foreign workers we have imported over the last decade.

    • Anonymous says:

      exactly….the ‘great Christian nation’ of cayman should only ask itself one question:
      what would Jesus do?

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    • Anonymous says:

      Yes. That works very well for Dubai, Hong Kong and Singapore. Guest workers are just that: guests.

      As long as Cayman is open and transparent about what it is offering – and what it is not offering – that is fair.

      It won’t work for financial services employees though, as it would destroy the sector. Low wage areas though, yes – of course.

    • Anonymous says:

      Truth! But this is the true reality of ‘Caymankind.’

    • Anonymous says:

      Expats in the Gulf counties rarely get citizenship….yet people rush to work these. Cayman should be no different. You are welcome to work with no expectation of citizenship.

    • Anonymous says:

      Working here is a privilege not a right. Many countries have a limited period of stay before you have to leave. Cayman isn’t unique in that regard. Many locals don’t work certain jobs because mass immigration suppresses wages. If a business has the option of hiring a local for a decent wage or hiring someone on a work permit for a fraction of said wage who do you think they will hire!? The cheaper option of course! A balance needs to be struck and we are not striking it. Cayman-kind is a silly gimmick phrase created by the tourist board. Caymanians as a whole are a kind and friendly people but they don’t like being taken for granted. We have reached the point where immigration is becoming a net negative. A pattern observable in other countries across the globe. Me thinks you need to lose the attitude.

    • . says:

      I am a former expat: don’t come.
      To start with, Cayman has no future. It will end-up as a toxic wasteland, sooner than you think. Secondly, it was your choice to come FOR WORK.

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    • Anonymous says:

      @3:42, after reading your comments, I must ask what was your reasoning to come to Cayman? Was it to “build buildings” or, “keep people safe in their beds when they sleep”?? OR perhaps, you came because you needed work/money to survive and take care of family?? I suspect the former. Hey, I get it… wanting a better life is a human condition. BUT the fact is, it everyone who comes here should not expect that they have the right to stay here. Understand that if the current model continues it won’t end well for Caymanians, and everyone else here. There are only so many people a small island can take. The economy Cayman currently has does not allow minimum wage workers to live too comfortably. And it is only getting worse. Granting people to stay, who can’t afford it only has resulted in a ballooning budget for the NAU.

    • Anonymous says:

      But you come here knowing that anyway.

  36. Anonymous says:

    Dwane, quite scary the pace of status grants and PR need to be slowed down? The daily pace and I mean literally every single day of Work Permit approvals need to be slowed down! The numbers don’t lie, what Island you living in bro?

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    • Anonymous says:

      Correct, it’s WP numbers that make the difference.

      Long term, PR and status are also worthy of attention, but almost exclusively at the low productivity/low wages end of the spectrum.

      (That’s a euphemism for no more importing uneducated voters who can be bribed, please).

    • Anonymous says:

      Seymour and the rest of these politicians are what is quite scary.

  37. Anonymous says:

    we need to cap how many work permits are granted per year. no more than 10% of any nationality unless they are British is allowed.

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  38. Anonymous says:

    Lawsuits coming, say persons eligible for status grants.

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    • Anonymous says:

      Bring them on then.

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      • Anonymous says:

        Cayman cannot afford them. And it will lose them.

        If you want to avoid them and want to succeed in what the Minister wants (and many Caymanians seemingly wish) much care and understanding needs to be applied. That would necessarily require meaningful private sector participation. Something that has been offered pro bono (and rejected) for years.

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      • Anonymous says:

        You can’t afford them.

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      • Anonymous says:

        Best tell JuJu to borrow some more money first.

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    • Anonymous says:

      This is the kind of person who we don’t need here.

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      • Anonymous says:

        You don’t want persons who understand and follow your laws. That is a great position to take. So Caymanian.

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      • Anonymous says:

        This is the kind of person who moved here and has obeyed our rules, jumped through all our hoops, submitted endless certified paperwork from one government department to another, literally had blood tests and medical checkups for 15+ years and now you want to change the rules on them and say nah not good enough to be a Caymanian. Damn right they’re gonna sue us and quite right.

        By all means make the rules harder, PR seem particularly easy but you can’t go changing the rules for people who already followed all the rules to get to where they are.

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    • Anonymous says:

      Will rally the troops.
      Will sue.
      that’s a promise.

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    • Anonymous says:

      It is a privilege, not a right.

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