Consultation for 5 and 10 year PRCs released

The Minister for Immigration, Jason Hayward, has published a paper and announced a consultation for PRC, reducing it to 10 years in many cases, and to 5 years in others. However, the proposals create uncertainty as to whether it is contemplated that lower income families will still qualify for PRC.

The proposals are contained in a broader consultation that also contains some likely controversial proposals on priority of Bermudians in employment, but I shall focus here on the PRC proposals, starting on p14 of the pdf.

The proposal says that the 20 year PRC has not had enough of an impact on retaining people in Bermuda. It proposes:

• reducing the 20 year PRC to 10 years, but with an annual income requirement of $83,000;
• reducing the Job Maker PRC from 10 years to 5 years;
• reducing eligibility to 5 years for nurses, CFAs, actuaries, computer engineers, software developers, and certified accountants.

Reducing the 20 years to 10 will be welcome to many, but may cut off eligibility for families where no one person earns more than $83,000. Particularly with respect to children of these families, it will create a class disparity, whereby whether a child is allowed to stay in Bermuda as an adult will depend on parental income.

The consultation is open for comments online here. You have to create a login, and then answer prompts on each section of the consultation. If you are only interested in the PRC proposals, you can skip forwards while leaving other sections blank. The consultation is open until the 15th April.