The response from Eliot Lincoln follows news of plans, revealed by the JEP on Saturday, which are expected to be formally announced by the government within weeks.
The move is designed to solve the recruitment crisis in the agriculture, hospitality and retail sectors, which have experienced an extreme shortage of seasonal staff, partly driven by EU workers preferring to stay within the Eurozone following a fall in the value of the pound.
Mr Lincoln said: ‘We welcome the visa plan. We’ve actually been working with the Economic Development Minister and his officers on this. Some of our sectors are really struggling. Agriculture has been really bad this year ever since Brexit. The exchange rate means people from the EU have effectively been taking pay cuts. Anything we can do to support these industries is a good thing.’
He said recruitment, made more difficult by low unemployment and record employment, remained one of Chamber’s top priorities.
Mr Lincoln added: ‘It’s very difficult to recruit so anything to ease that is a good thing. We’re mindful of challenges of long-term residency on-Island, so bringing people in to plug short-term gaps while working to get these businesses as productive as possible is good. We’ve got a three- to four-year period to put things in place to improve productivity but in the short-term we can’t let businesses go to the wall.
‘In hospitality it’s been really bad in terms of getting chefs because you’ve got an industry that pays well but not as well as financial services. You tend to find people migrate across sectors. You’ve seen those who get their five-year quallies and immediately jump to financial services.’
He acknowledged that the visa scheme, which would oblige workers to return to their home countries after ten months but allow them return the following year, presented security issues for the UK. Authorities there have raised private concerns with their Jersey counterparts that the Island could be used as a back door to the British mainland.
Mr Lincoln said: ‘We need to be mindful of that. My guess is this must be a conversation that is going on in the UK as well. Things like how we track and make sure people are staying during their visa and not afterwards is important. We will also see some challenges in terms of infrastructure, perhaps with a couple of hundred people coming, but these people are also going to be spending money and their wages will be cycled into the economy.’
Economic Development Minister Senator Lyndon Farnham said he intends to present his plans ‘within weeks’ to allow the scheme to be up and running in time for the 2019 summer season.
