Work permits could have helped

From Deputy Paul Le Claire.

I READ with great disappointment the news release regarding low consignment relief to the UK from the Channel Islands.

As the UK will impose VAT on Low Value Goods imported from the Channel Islands from 1 April, Jersey will face significant challenges in its employment market and upon the resources within the low income support system.

With an increase in low skilled workers entering an already flooded employment market, little can be done to remove the effects in Jersey from this move upon our community. These problems will only be compounded by people leaving the other Channel Islands from these industries that will in part choose to come here to seek work.

I wonder what the experience shall be and how this will affect Guernsey and other Channel Islands. We know that they employ thousands of people on work permits there, which are tied to their residences. No doubt some workers will realise they must come here if they are to continue to live in the Channel Islands.

They can of course, and yet still may, hop on a plane or a boat at any time before April and come to seek work now, instead of waiting for the day their jobs are finished.

This should not prove logistically difficult as we have regular flights and passages from our sister islands and our entry gates which once also were protected with work permits have been removed and replaced with expensive new ones which unfortunately have no hinges or locks.

Work permits in Jersey, however, could have helped mitigate the effects of these changes to our economy, had we introduced them as I have been saying and trying to do in the States for years.

The awful effects of high and increasing unemployment could have been reduced and eliminated for many people in Jersey, had our ruling political elite been willing to listen or had they shown any competence, understanding or foresight. Instead many residents will face tough challenges to survive here thanks to their incompetence.

These challenges are not isolated they are combined with the everyday facts of life that ordinary people must face of increasingly high rents and mortgages, combined with the other high costs of living here. In Guernsey the cost of living is over twice that than in the UK and much higher for pensioners. We don’t know what it is here because the political cliques don’t want us to know. No doubt more young and middle aged people will have to leave to find work and a future, the elderly are in the main unable to do so.

We have in the past all too often tended to belittle our sister islanders who are geographically symbiotic. I have always found these disparaging remarks about them offensive and foolish because as we all know, united we stand and divided we are conquered.

Guernsey politicians, to their credit and the people who have elected them to their positions from their community, have recognised the need for a diversified economy and a proper immigration and residency policy to protect local workers and opportunities as has the Isle of Man.

I have advocated work permits for all immigrants since 1999. We employ them for over 400 people from non EU countries working in Jersey today, yet I and the public, have been continually reassured by our ruling political elite that we don’t need them and not to worry all will be fine.

I now know how it must have felt to have been Cassandra who was blessed with perfect foresight and simultaneously cursed with having no one believe her.