The main purpose of the rollover policy is to prevent most foreigners from
staying in the Cayman Islands for seven or more consecutive years to avoid any legal
or moral obligation that will provide these long-term residents with the right
to security of tenure and other citizenship rights, such as the right to vote.
As Kurt Tibbetts, who was the leader of the PPM government that implemented the
UDP-drafted term limit, said after a review of the Immigration Law in 2006:
“Though large-scale immigration will always be needed, control of the country
must remain in the hands of Caymanians. We are happy, as we always have been,
to integrate immigrants into our society; to accept in due course that they
have become Caymanians with all the rights of Caymanians, but the numbers must
be limited. We cannot in that sense integrate all those who would like to live
here. That would not be integration, it would be take-over.”
It is often argued that international law, in particular human rights treaties,
give immigrants to any country citizenship rights, after they have lived in
that territory for a certain time period.
At the same time international law also recognises the right of countries to
determine who can enter their territory and who can become a citizen.
What the term limit set out to do was to resolve the conflict between the need
for immigration and the fear of “take-over”, by ensuring sufficient immigration
to support the economy, while at the same time limiting the number of
immigrants who could become citizens.
After seven years, currently, only residents that are deemed “key employees” by
their employers and the immigration authorities receive the right to stay for
two more years during which they can apply for permanent residence status,
which, if they are successful, will ultimately give them the right to obtain
citizenship rights.
Would then Caymanians lose control of their country, if the rollover did not exist?
The answer is it depends.
If there was no regulation at all and every person coming to the island could
indiscriminately become Caymanian, then the notion of a takeover might be felt
by large segments of the population and perhaps justifiably so.
Yet not everyone will stay indefinitely and not everyone will want to obtain
permanent residence and then Caymanian status.
But the question of an immigrant “takeover” will also depend on who is
considered Caymanian.
Although Caymanians as a people and Cayman as a country are clearly the product
of immigration, debates over who is Caymanian and who is not still rage. The
blanket granting of Caymanian Status to 2,850 people by Cabinet, under
sometimes less than transparent circumstances in 2003, did not help.
As the popular discussions over “paper Caymanians” and how many generations of
Caymanian ancestry someone has only all too often show, this is an issue that
has yet to be resolved.
If immigration is indeed needed by the Cayman Islands and if the goal is
integration, the current system and business centric “key employee” approach has
the wrong focus. People who have managed to hold on to a job for seven years in
the Cayman Islands under a work permit system have already demonstrated that
their labour is required by the local economy.
The onus should therefore be on who is “key” to the country and Cayman’s
community. But this will, in turn, also require the acceptance that eventually
many immigrants will be granted the same rights as Caymanians.
In all likelihood there will always be a need for restrictions on immigration,
in the same way that they exist everywhere else in the world, but in its
current form the rollover has not resolved the conflict between the need for
immigration, the rights and obligations that come with it and Cayman’s national
identity.