OUTBermuda: Open letter

Please see the following open letter from OUTBermuda to the Minister of Home Affairs, The Hon. Walton Brown, JP, MP, in respect of the recently tabled Bermuda Immigration and Protection Amendment (No 2) Act 2017. --- Dear Minister, We are writing to register our initial objection to your stated proposal to give primacy to the Bermuda Immigration and Protection Act 1956 (“the Immigration Act”) over the Human Rights Act 1981 (“The Human Rights Act”). Our interest in your proposal primarily stems from our initial concern about the potential adverse consequences to families that are likely to result. We are also cognizant of the potential for harm that removing human rights protections will have on vulnerable people. We do not believe that upholding human rights principles is in any way incompatible with the Government’s mandate to serve in the best interests of Bermudians. If Bermuda’s laws are not to be enacted and enforced with reference to those principles, which by their very nature seek to give effect to the inherent dignity of all people, then by what guiding principles does the Government seek to act? By virtue of Schedule II to the Human Rights Act, there are already a number of provisions within the Immigration Act that exist outside the Island’s Human Rights regime. We are unsure whether the Government’s intention is to expand Schedule II by increasing the number of provisions from the Immigration Act to which the schedule refers, or whether its intention is to exempt the Immigration Act in total from Human Rights scrutiny. Regardless, we believe both to be problematic. We do not believe your statement about United Kingdom immigration law operating outside the scope of human rights scrutiny to be accurate. Indeed, the experience of the current British Prime Minister during her tenure as Home Secretary demonstrates otherwise. Even if it were true that Bermuda was in the minority in terms of granting human rights protections in matters of immigration to non-citizens, that of itself should not be regarded as something nefarious or untoward. There is no reason why an employer, faced with the prospect of hiring from overseas given the absence of a qualified Bermudian, should be permitted to do so in a manner that that is discriminatory under the Human Rights Act. For example, where an employer seeks to favor employment of individuals from one country or region over another, merely because those individuals are willing to accept less in pay, that should not preclude a non-Bermudian applicant from another country or region from raising a human rights complaint as a result of unfavorable treatment when seeking to have their employer renew their work permit. Clearly, allowing such an employer to operate outside the scope of human rights protections promotes exploitation, and serves ultimately to undermine working conditions for Bermudians. This is just one of the unintended, yet foreseeable, adverse consequences your proposal may have. The Bermuda Supreme Court judgments to which your statement alludes have highlighted that the Immigration Act is not fit for purpose in a number of respects. That is a point upon which most will agree. While we agree that there is a need for wholesale reform of Bermuda’s immigration laws, we do not believe exempting those laws from Human Rights scrutiny is the best way forward. We will await sight of the proposed Bill and intend to write further on the specific matters proposed therein, once we have had opportunity to review the same. For now, we would like to register our objection to what we view as an unfortunate proposal that will erode human rights protections to the detriment of everyone in Bermuda. Yours sincerely, Chen Foley, Chair OUTBermuda