Janie Brown has lived in Bermuda for 23 years, employs a predominantly Bermudian workforce in her dental practice and has two Bermudian children.

And yet, without status, the US native can still be made to feel like a “second-class citizen” in her adopted home.

“It just never seems to be enough. How much can one foreigner give to a country which treats them so poorly sometimes?” said the New Yorker, who featured in a February government campaign explaining the reasoning behind its controversial immigration reform plan.

Dr Brown first visited Bermuda in 1992 to celebrate finishing dental school, met her husband here and married a year later.

They have since divorced and she raises their children, aged 17 and 14, in Paget. She spoke to The Royal Gazette at Par-la-Ville Dental in Hamilton, which she owns, after the Bermuda Government opted to press forward with its Pathways to Status legislation on Monday.

In the House of Assembly, the One Bermuda Alliance rejected the Progressive Labour Party’s insistence that the changes be decided via a bipartisan committee.

Tabled by Michael Fahy, the Minister of Home Affairs, the initiative would make it more straightforward for long-term residents to gain both permanent residency and status.

Dr Brown rejected the Progressive Labour Party’s suggestion that the OBA’s underlying motive with Pathways to Status is to bolster the island’s white voting population, therefore helping the party secure its future in power.

“Part of me feels like it always becomes this racial issue in Bermuda. I really don’t think that this is a platform for racism,” she said.

“Because in 23 years I haven’t been allowed to vote, I’ve ignored all the political nonsense that goes on.

“Who would I vote for in the next election? Not so much the party that would provide status for me, but the party that would represent my views best. Neither of them appeal to me, honestly.”

The New Yorker, who has a permanent residence certificate, said that gaining status would affect her on both a personal and a professional level, securing her sole proprietorship business and helping her to potentially buy a home.

She said: “There’s a joke in my family. When I’m cross with my son, he’ll say to me tongue-in-cheek, ‘You should watch your mouth, because I can march down to immigration and have you kicked off this island’. We laugh about it, but there is also an element of truth to it. It would be really hard to leave Bermuda now. This is my children’s home, we don’t have another home to go to unless we create one.”

Filipina housekeeper Mhely Carlit, who has lived in St George’s for 20 years, said that she had occasionally been treated like a second-class citizen by some sections of Bermudian society.

“When I’m in the store, the cashier might look at us as if we’re not entitled to anything,” said Mrs Carlit, who followed her husband Renato here from the Philippines in 1996 after he secured a chef’s job at Tom Moore’s Tavern.

“But we have a lot of local friends and they accept and support us. They don’t think of us as a burden to anybody; they accept us the way we are,” added the mother-of-one, who also featured in the Government’s awareness campaign.

Mrs Carlit said that gaining PRC status would help the family to avoid the stress of renewing work permits and secure their place in Bermuda.

“We’re not taking opportunities away from anyone, because we’ve already been here for 20 years. We just want to be part of the society and the community,” she said. “It’s not about race, it’s about human rights.”