Speaking at an immigration forum organised by the Cayman Islands Tourism Association last week, Mr Ritch urged the audience to petition the Cayman cabinet to bring about a remedy to anomalies in the jurisdiction's immigration procedures, which have led to large backlogs in the system, Cayman Net News reported.

One issue of particular concern to the Cayman authorities is that of the rollover policy for individual work permits. Currently, Immigration Law states that a person can only be on a work permit for a maximum of seven years, effective from January 1, 2004, but a separate policy exists for those who had been on a work permit for more than five years before the current law went into effect.

The major problem is that some of these policies do not dovetail correctly with the current law and can lead to a situation where a person is entitled to a number of years for a work permit, but still falls short of the time period to apply for permanent residency.

According to Mr Ritch, there are some 9,000 applications pending with the Immigration Office, despite the fact that 600-700 applications are being processed every week. He noted that the Office's efforts to clear this backlog are frustrated by dual applications for temporary and one-year work permit from the same individuals and he estimated that it would take up to a year to bring the situation under control.

Mr Ritch argued the case for the Immigration Office to be given the authority to assess some of the applications to speed up the process. Presently, applications are assessed by a twice-weekly meeting of the Work Permit Board.

“If you turn it into a department it would leave the board to handle more pertinent work permits while the less crucial ones are handled by the staff,” he stated.

Another flaw in the system means that some people had to leave Cayman within a week of knowing that their work permit had been approved but had expired during the year they waited for an answer.

However, Mr Ritch stated that the government is prepared to listen to suggestions as to how the situation can be turned around, and is keen to bring about changes. In September, an Immigration Review team was appointed to examine flaws in and recommend changes to the Immigration Law.

“Cabinet is concerned about the immigration issue and how it’s affecting employers and employees. I think they’re playing an active part in working on it,” Mr Ritch said.