CONSIDERATION should be given to allowing the families of migrant workers to enter the Island, the children’s commissioner has said.
Deborah McMillan believes that staff shortages will continue in many sectors unless workers from overseas are made to feel welcome.
She made the comments yesterday during a public hearing held by the Migration and Population Review Panel on the government’s proposed common population policy.
She said that consideration should be given to the families that are left behind when a worker moves to the Island.
‘If we are encouraging the male of the family, the head of the family, the main earner, to move thousands of miles away from their family to come and work here and leave their children behind, what we have seen and what international research tells us is that those children could be at risk, those that have been left behind. Morally should we not be considering that, if we are encouraging people to come and work here?’ she said.
She added that families needed to ‘feel welcome’ when coming to the Island.
‘Do we want to be a country where we say you can come and work but only for nine months, you can’t bring your children and we don’t care what happens to your family wherever you leave them. Come here earn money and go away again.
‘Or do we want to be inclusive and vibrant – we want you to be here, bring your families and not be treated like second-class citizens,’ she said.
Mrs Macmillan added that the current outline of the common population policy would result in the same trends of staff shortages across multiple industries.
‘There is going to be a continuation of where we are now. Low-skilled low-paid migrants will come here and they will continue to feel like second-class citizens. They will feel they aren’t part of Jersey as they are here for a short period of time and then they will leave.
‘We will also continue to see a struggle to recruit into skilled jobs where we are currently seeing shortages. You’ll know that it’s acute in terms of health professionals, teachers, social workers and there is a lot of others as well. We are seeing a lack of inward migration and that is having a huge impact, at the moment I can’t see that the changes to the controls are going to improve that.’
She added: ‘If you want teachers, if you want social workers to come here, you need to demonstrate the value of coming to Jersey. It is not about how much we might pay you, it’s about making sure the cost of living is supporting for them, it’s about ensuring the schools they send their children to are as good as they can be and that they can access very good health care.
‘What we are seeing is people are coming into Jersey to undertake these jobs and leaving quite quickly because they are quickly finding that Jersey is not a country they can commit to living in because it’s too expensive. We are not seeing these issues tackled as the policy is currently written.’
Mrs Macmillan said the common population policy as it stands ‘needs development’, including further consultation with children.
