The April 1st D-day for work permit term limits is fast upon us.  The policy applies to over 10,000 people out there in the Bermuda marketplace.  Whether rightly or wrongly, now is the time that “non-key” employees should be thinking about packing their bags, planning their good-bye parties and making a life elsewhere.  Now is the time that companies who have doubts about the “key” status of their personnel should be discussing the impending deadline with their staff and searching for new employees to fill their places.  Landlords will be thinking about searching for new tenants and schools will be querying the accuracy of their placement lists for the autumn.

If the April 1st, 2007 deadline marks the end of your 6 year term and you haven’t heard from the Department of Immigration yet in response to your application for a 3 year extension or total exemption, now is the time you want to be pressing your employer to chase Immigration for a response. (Others may hold out vague hopes that their deadline has been lost in the administrative logjam that is reportedly plaguing the Department due to the simultaneous inflow of work permit exemption and passport applications).  For those who have worked here over 6 years and haven’t yet applied, remember that even if you are the best corporate citizen or the CEO of the biggest reinsurance company, you won’t get the exemption unless you apply for one and do so prior to the April 1st deadline. 

For anxious pending applicants, Government has said that it would aim to inform you of the outcome of your application by the end of December, 2006 but, failing that, by April 1st, 2007 at the very latest (the date of the very deadline). What Government has not made clear is how long you will be given to leave the Island after being so informed.  For those applicants whose 6 years are up in April and who are not informed of the outcome of their application until April, one hopes that they will be given sufficient time to properly get their affairs in order before being asked to leave.  That begs the question, however, of what the appeal process, if any, will be, and whether unsuccessful applicants will be allowed to stay and work in Bermuda pending the outcome of their appeals.

The vast majority of guest workers who do not qualify for extensions or exemptions must be anxiously awaiting the outcome of businessman David Ezekiel’s recent trip to London.  He flew there to consult with top lawyers to see if there was some alternative solution (besides work permit limits) to the permanent residency problem.  The rationale behind the work permit limit policy has been to prevent work permit holders from coming to expect that they can permanently reside here.  Government dealt with that issue in the 1990s and understandably does not want to have to deal with it again.  The signing of a waiver has been canvassed as an alternative solution (and, indeed, is currently offered in the application process) whereby guest workers expressly renounce any future claim on rights to permanent residency in exchange for longer stays on the Island.  However, it has been said that a waiver would not be effective in law to waive residency rights under international human rights law. Another possibility being explored is having work permit holders “break” their period of residency here by moving abroad after so many years for a short period and then moving back again. Right now the required period of absence is 2 years; the question is how much shorter can that period be in order to effectively break the claim to residency? 

Government has been at pains to stress that it will do nothing to jeopardize the continuing success of international business in Bermuda and, to that end, is receptive to alternative solutions. With only a couple of months to go, however, we need to hear about them fast.   In the meantime, don’t pack your bags just yet.