PR points system change to speed up delays
(CNS): Government officials believe that a number of changes and clarifications to the permanent residency points system should speed up the process and simplify the calculation for applicants regarding their investments in property or businesses. A new set of regulations was gazetted last Friday and explanatory notes have indicated that problems relating to ‘priority occupations’, which have delayed processing of permanent residence applications received since October 2013, have been resolved.
Cabinet has stated that the new Points System will apply to all applications for permanent residence submitted since 25 October 2013 but applicants will be given the chance to update their documents and supply more information that may benefit them under the new provisions.
Officials said the removal of the references to ‘priority occupations’ in the explanation section of the regulation should push the process forward. The introduction of a note saying Cabinet can, rather than will, publish a list of priority occupations at its discretion means they will be taken into account on applications as and when. Because government had not previously published a list of priority occupations, the problem of immigration officials being obligated to take them into account had stalled the application process.
Another important change is that applicants who are sharing an investment, such as their home, with their spouse can now include the full amount of that investment even if it is split with their partner, increasing their chance of more points in the investment section, one of the weightiest of the factors taken into account. Spouses’ incomes will also now be taken into account and assessments of salaries will be based on earnings over the previous 12 months instead of an average for five years. What constitutes “income” has also been clarified and includes salary, commission, gratuities, investment income and any other demonstrated earnings.
Volunteering for non-profit organisations will now earn points, as officials said it had unintentionally not been included. All applicants are required to take a history and culture test but the scheduling of tests had been stopped because of the problems with the priority occupations. Officials said these will resume in the next few weeks and applicants will be notified shortly when they can take the test.
According to the latest immigration figures, between January and September last year the board refused well over 300 PR and status applications from more than 1900 that were considered over that nine months — a refusal rate of around 18.5%.
Explanation for changes to Permanent Residence Points System
Category: Local News
10k gets you approved quickly
Only in Cayman could you “speed up” a delay.
Too little too late for most to be honest. I am even going to leaving parties for Caymanians nowadays, as they “roll themselves” over and head to Europe.
“problems relating to ‘priority occupations’, which have delayed processing of permanent residence applications received since October 2013, have been resolved”. So they came up with the idea of extra points for priority professions, entirely sensible, but either couldn’t make their minds as to what a priority profession was, or worried that it would mean too many people passed, so after 4 months have decided to avoid the need for a decision that someone may criticise them for by kicking the need to actually decide priority professions down the road. Wow – decisive, brave government. Well at least they didn’t appoint a committee to deal with it.
The date is wrong in this article, it should read ” the new Points System will apply to all applications for permanent residence submitted since 26 October 2013″. Applications filed by applicants and accepted by Immigration on or before 25 October 2013 must be considered under the old law, as immigration well knows. The new law did not come into effect until the following day.
Do airmiles count towards my PR? If so I got enough for about 3 of us…but I need the priority queue, not getting in line with the riffraff!!
Ever thought that someone may also consider you riffraff? Is there a priority queue for people like you?
With the removal of the priority jobs it looks as though they’ve found a way to subtract points from those just over the required point limit. An easy way to give the goodbye stamp to the majority of applications no doubt. What a mess indeed? Playing with peoples lives.
Why would you want to get rid of people who have lived here for 20 odd years, have made Cayman their home, have contributed positively to this society. Is it because they are NOT rich!
sounds good to me. They all have other homes, probably carrying the flag in their hands right now so please go back home if you can’t accept the rules. But sadly we know the PPM/UDP/C4C need the poor from other countries so they’ll appeal and win
No we all don’t have other homes. We came as young people and fell in love with your country and THIS is our home. But we are left dangling for years and years for our status to be clarified. We can go back to our birth countries, be strangers among our own and tey to rebuild our lives but Cayman will have had and lost the best of us. So sad, so injust and so unfair.
Nothing wrong with rules as long as you don’t change them every month. Since I have been here almost 10 years the rules have changed many times.
Your leaders are worse than children if they think the game is unfair just change the rules, only they don’t realize no one wants to play anymore thus your are just playing with yourselves.
No its because they are regarded as f*&king driftwood by the party in power.
what a mess