Why doesn’t the Business Staffing Plan Board, labour or immigration department clamp down on companies such as XXXX, who make positions redundant and then place ads in the paper for the same position, only to hire an expat? This business practice has to stop and government has to make an example of companies that abuse this process. Auntie, I supported the idea of human resource functions being held by Caymanians only but I come to realise that in most cases the Caymanian HR employees still succumb to the pressures and don’t hire Caymanians.

Auntie’s answer: We can’t publish the name of the company that you mentioned, and the Department of Immigration won’t comment on individual cases anyway. The best we can do here is give you a more general response to the issue.

However, I will say that the issue of companies possibly circumventing the law to hire expats has been a problem for a long time. In addition to the scenario you describe, businesses have also been accused of tailoring their ads for expat employees already working for them. In case some of our readers are not familiar with this practice, it involves a business writing an ad for a specific position that is held by an expat in such a way that the job requirements can only be filled by the person already employed, in the hopes of ensuring no Caymanian will be “qualified” to apply. The intentions may be honourable, in that the employer wants to retain an employee that they like and who is doing the job well. However, the practice is not allowed, though it seems hard to control.

But there are official channels to deal with it. The immigration official I contacted explained that the process begins once the department becomes aware of a “breach or potential breach” of the law. At that point, the department’s enforcement section takes over to investigate the case.

Once that is completed, there are two options to deal with the matter, according to the official. One is to handle the infraction administratively, where the enforcement section issues a fine to the individual or business that committed the offence. For the second option, the case file is sent on to the Department of Public Prosecutions to decide if it should then be taken through the court system.

If you have credible information on a company contravening the law, the first step is to bring any potential offence to the attention of the immigration department (949-8344). Then we have to hope that the system will work. Of course, for many, that is a very distant hope, but you won’t know if things can change until you try.