Home Affairs Minister Michael Fahy released a new draft Work Permit Policy last week, and is now busy explaining it in various venues, along with his Immigration team.

For the One Bermuda Alliance (OBA) Government, this is Work Permit Policy 2.0. In 2013, a number of revisions were made to the Policy, but many had their genesis under the previous government and were modified rather than conceived by the OBA. Not planned by the Progressive Labour Party was the abolition of term limits, which had been attacked under the Progressive Labour Party (PLP) was widely seen as a jobs destroyer. It has not been missed.

The new 2014 draft is emphatically designed to create jobs and to boost the economy in order to increase the working population after the loss of some 5,000 jobs across the span of the recession.

This year’s big idea is the Bermuda Employment Visa (BEV), which would allow qualified (more on that later) exempted companies to have one work permit-free non-Bermudian employee for every five Bermuda-based employees. Each qualified employee under the programme would be able to hold a position for up to seven years without the need to advertise the job.

Only qualified exempted companies can apply for the BEV. Qualification is fairly rigorous; companies must demonstrate that they meet best practices for recruiting, hiring and training of their staff. The practical effect of that is that although smaller businesses can meet the standards with some work, larger companies with fully functioning human resources departments will qualify without much difficulty.

So in a company with 100 Bermuda-based employees, 20 non-Bermudians could hold BEVs. In that sense, the policy scores on two counts because it requires a company to hire a substantial number of people in Bermuda in order to qualify for BEVs in a meaningful way and gives companies a better sense of security that they will be able to keep a number of key non-Bermudians on staff without the uncertainty engendered by having to renew work permits.

Because of the qualification demands and likely cost, the eligible staff are likely to be quite senior (although this is not a requirement of the policy). The fee for the BEV not been announced, but given that the soon-to-be abolished ten-year work permit costs $15,750 and the fee for a five-year work permit is $5,408, the fee for the BEV may be somewhere in the middle — say, $10,000 — so it only makes economic sense for companies to use them for quite senior staff.

There are other changes in the policy. Some of the major ones are:

• A change in the new business work permit, which allows exempted companies to be granted up to ten work permits within the first six months of their moving to Bermuda. Previously they could get five work permits and they had to earn over $125,000 a year. Companies requiring more than ten work permits within the first six months will need to present a plan for their projected Bermudian hires and utilisation of local service providers;

• A Global Entrepreneur Work Permit which would give a non-Bermudian planning to set up an exempted company in Bermuda permission to live in Bermuda for a maximum of 12 months while planning the start-up;

• The English language test will only apply to Portuguese nationals governed by the Bermuda-Azores agreement and construction workers; and

• The letters of release previously required of employers are replaced by a confirmation of termination simply saying when and why the employee stopped work.

There is more, of course — and in the in the weeks to come there will be plenty of debate before the implementation of the policy on December 1. Whether people will agree with the ideas or not will depend on their perspective, political or otherwise.

But what these policies say, without question, is that Bermuda welcomes investment from overseas. And it will be very difficult for any business to say that the reason they did not come to or expand in Bermuda was due to Immigration restrictions.

What we Bermudians need to remember is that the money we receive to pay rent, buy food, clothes, cars, bikes, and everything else is not generated by local Bermuda businesses. It comes from foreign exchange generated by international business and tourism, with the lion’s share coming from the exempted company that constitutes international business.

So when exempted companies come to Bermuda, everyone benefits, regardless of whether it is a Bermudian or a non-Bermudian sitting in the New Company Ltd office.

Bill Zuill is a director of employment agency Bermuda Executive Services Ltd. You can e-mail him at marketing@bes.bm with comments or questions.

Versions of this column and others are on www.bermudaemployment.com