Dear Sir,

I am organising my daughter’s wedding reception for October this year. I started by engaging the caterer of our choice before Christmas. Now, here we are six months later and four months before the wedding, and suddenly the caterers tell us that they can supply the food, but they can’t supply the staff, as they don’t have enough. The owner of the business says that he wants to hire another 150 people but that the Department of Immigration will not approve any work permits for him, and he cannot get Bermudians to apply for jobs or stay in the jobs if hired.

Ask any employer in Bermuda and it is the same story. Look at the fire service, look at the police service: they are desperately undermanned and yet the Government will not allow them to bring in people from overseas, or it takes so long to issue a work permit that the applicant has long since found something else, somewhere else.

When is this government going to get the message that reform of the Department of Immigration is long overdue? The ministers pay lip service to the obvious needs of our community by telling us that they acknowledge that we need to grow the local population, but then make it impossible for employers to bring people in.

Of course, as the unpopular One Bermuda Alliance realised many years ago when they tried to introduce the “Pathways to Status”, that process needed to be started then — but the Progressive Labour Party and its supporters marched on Parliament and prevented it.

The root cause of our problems now — including our inability to reduce our indebtedness — is the lack of action on this very issue. We need more people and we need more people who are willing to work; the ball should have been rolling for a long time now. We also need a government which, belated as it is, is willing to facilitate getting those people here now!

Or what? When we get the new hotels open — rather if — who is going to clean them? Who is going to staff them? Will no one be able to host a wedding reception because there are not enough people who would work for those that run catering businesses? We will call 911 and there is no one who can respond?

There is already a problem with the availability of EMTs because of the firefighting requirements for our airport. Does there have to be an avoidable tragedy before the penny drops with those who have the power to change things?

The “new system” for streamlining work-permit applications has been deemed a failure. What is a failure is that those in charge of the Department of Immigration do not impress upon the existing staff that it is imperative that work permits are processed in a timely manner — three weeks at most — so that businesses owned by Bermudians can function.

Instead, the mentality of that department seems to be that each permit it processes is a foreigner coming to take a job from a worthy Bermudian. That narrative needs to be dispelled in short order, and any staff member who cannot get over the fact that Bermuda needs immigration should be reassigned.

I don’t think I am the only one who is seriously worried about our future.

ELSPETH WEISBERG

Warwick