was in power, says long term residents should be given status.

The Progressive Labour Party, which promised to do something when it was in Opposition, now spends more time explaining the fears of born Bermudians than it does saying what it plans to do about long term residents.

No issue is more complex or fraught with emotion than the issue of long term residents. No issue is more difficult to deal with and more costly politically.

The reason the issue is complex is because Bermuda is a small and expensive country where granting one person full rights could mean taking a home or a job out of the hands of another.

It is made more complicated when the majority -- though far from all -- long term residents are white (and that includes Acoreans) while the majority of those who fear displacement as a result of a wholesale grant of status or residence rights are black.

Finally, it is complicated because Bermuda's labyrinthine immigration and status laws have made it so. As the UBP inched along, trying to do the right thing while preserving its political capital by not granting blanket status rights, it created volumes of laws and regulations which only trained lawyers can decipher.

The only way to avoid that, and to end the uncetainty that long-term residents have to bear is to enact a blanket law.

That law should state that either: People who come to Bermuda on work permits come in the full knowledge that they run the risk of losing their job at some point and must be prepared to go home when they are no longer needed; or People who have been on the Island for a continuous period of time -- says 20 years -- will receive status if they so wish, assuming they are of good character.

The first option tells people that they are economic units, brought to Bermuda because they are needed and discarded when they no longer are. This should be made clear at the outset, so there is no doubt in anyone's minds about their status.

The second option treats people like human beings. It assumes that they have something more than a 40-hour week to offer. It does not care where they come from, and in fact it welcomes a diversity of people from all over the world who are prepared to learn from the Bermudian culture as well as to pass on their knowledge.

The second option is the better one. It would enable the Government which puts it in place to say that it has done the right thing, that it has overcome petty, short-sighted political concerns and at the same time that it is working to overcome the racial wrongs of the past, it has done something to heal the wounds of the present.