This column is devoted to financial matters, and next week it will return to them. Today, however, I am honour bound to discuss something other than money.I cannot understand or agree with Minister Derrick Burgess’s opinion that expatriates should not express their views on politics in Bermuda. Freedom of speech cannot be divided: deny it to one and you deny it to all. Yet, as an expatriate, I may apparently no longer comment on the running of the society of which I have been a member for more than 30 years.

Under the principle of collective responsibility, when a Cabinet Minister makes a statement, all his Cabinet colleagues are automatically subscribed to it. Mr. Burgess is the Minister of Labour and Immigration. When he states his opinion — and that is all that Mr. Burgess has done — it automatically becomes Government policy.

What are expatriates to do? What, specifically, is this expatriate to do? This is an opinion column. Other aspects of my job often entail commenting on local politics. Just last month, in print, I accused Bermuda Governments of the past 40 years of the greatest theft in history.

I cannot now stand quietly by as Mr. Burgess unilaterally suspends freedom of speech for those without a Bermuda stamp in their passports. To bow to Mr. Burgess’s personal views would be a disservice to the overwhelming majority of Bermudians who value their own freedom of speech and who have fought to live in a just society.

Constructive criticism is the bedrock of human relationships. The open and frank exchange of views is the mechanism by which progress is made. No Government or employer gets it right all the time. Although I am a guest in this wonderful country, I see things that are wrong from time to time, as I do in every other country I visit as a guest. As a human being, I have a duty to speak out. Under the policy of expatriate silence and existing immigration rules, if a Bermudian disagrees with anything I write or say, a quick phone call to the Immigration Department will ensure that Government employees will escort me to the airport without delay. As a foreigner, natural justice apparently no longer applies to me or my kind in the New Bermuda.

The 10 Commandments ask us to honour our mothers and fathers. My parents, however, allowed me to disagree with them, if I could make my case. The Commandments are silent on relations between workers and their employers, or between guest workers and their Governments.

Fully aware of the possible consequences, I have to say this: You are wrong, Minister, dead wrong. It is every person’s moral responsibility to speak out against what he or she believes to be wrong.

Most people would believe it necessary to speak out against the arbitrary suspension of human rights, for example. Freedom of speech is a basic human right. Minister, you have set Bermuda on a slippery slope that history tells us will irresistibly lead to the denial of human rights to Bermudians themselves. That cannot stand.

Please, Mr. Burgess, do not take Bermuda backwards to the days when some of us lived in fear of punishment if they spoke their mind. In 2007, Bermuda has come too far to resume its ill-considered ways of the past.

You ask — no, you demand — that I disassociate myself from the society in which I live. Yet expatriates have long contributed, and continue to contribute, to the development of these islands. Please do not stop them from helping Bermudians to become all that they can be.

I want only what is best for Bermuda. I voluntarily accepted the reduced human rights package available to non-Bermudians without a word because this Island granted me the freedom to be part of life here.

My views on Bermuda politics, when voiced, are intended only to produce a beneficial outcome. Like you, Mr. Burgess, I long to live in a fair society. Until recently, I thought I did.

You have the right to speak your mind. Shouldn’t everyone who is a part of Bermuda have that right?

If your idea holds, Mr. Burgess, the idea that freedom of speech is applicable only to those people you select, then I shall go quietly when your staff make their way to Ferry Reach to escort me to the airport for writing this column. The only sound you will hear on my enforced journey around the Reach will the noise of me weeping for the Bermuda I thought I knew and loved.