New rules to tackle old problems

In their place we now have the Control of Housing and Work Law, legislation which replaces undertakings law permissions and housing law ‘quallies’ and licences with four new categories – Entitled, Entitled to Work, Licensed and Registered.

Given that the new measures are still intended to control immigration through access to jobs and accommodation, they can hardly be described as revolutionary. Nevertheless, the claims that they are more streamlined than the mechanisms of the old law, and that they will make it much simpler to monitor population trends, bear scrutiny.

It is also true that the new registration rules will help to discourage ‘white van man’ from coming to the Island to work in the black economy, avoiding tax and social security, and potentially depriving bona fide residents of jobs.

But it is anything but clear that the new law will be capable of solving at a stroke all problems associated with a high rate of immigration. The truth is that it is almost impossible to envisage legislation capable of producing such an outcome – unless we were prepared to accept rules so draconian that they would be unacceptable not only from a human rights perspective, but also because of the damage they would inflict on the Island’s reputation.

Time will, of course, allow the authorities – and Islanders in general – to assess the effectiveness of the new law and its potential as a means of limiting the runaway immigration of recent years. Time will also allow residents to come to terms with measures and categorisations which, at the outset, will be unfamiliar. It might also be the case that experience of the rules in real-world operation will lead to modification and improvement.

Meanwhile, the idea that the registration cards that are part of the new regulatory regime amount to identity cards, with all the pejorative connotations of that description, is a red herring. Although the cards hold personal information – and they would be useless if they did not – they are no more an intrusion into privacy than the Jersey driving licence.