Caribbean Review: Parliament Passes The Caymanian Protection Act

Yoshi Tatsumi

The British Parliament has passed the Immigration (Transition) (Amendment and Validation) Bill, 2025, which has recently been renamed the Caymanian Protection Act. With 15 votes in favour and no votes against, this bill will make key changes for lives in the Cayman Islands, such as increasing residency requirements for Caymanian status, stricter rules around permit workers leaving their jobs within the first two years, and other reforms aimed at combating Caymanian workers' job loss through increasing residency requirements. 

What does the bill entail?

The Caymanian Protection Act follows an October 2025 proposal from the Cayman Islands Government to revise the current Immigration Act, which was last revised in 2022. The new legislation, drafted this year, was presented as a 58-page document highlighting numerous changes the government wanted for the previous law. It has now been renamed the Caymanian Protection Act (CPA). The CPA is expected to become law in the New Year. The bill makes significant changes, such as updating immigration rules by increasing residency requirements to 20 years for status and 15 years for spouses, and implementing work permit term limits that would affect work permit holders who leave their jobs within the first two years. These permit holders would be required to leave the islands for a year before reapplying. Additional changes include installing term limits for non-Caymanian civil servants, and granting the Caymanian Status & Permanent Residency Board and the Director of Workforce Opportunities & Residency Cayman the right to extend residency and employment rights for a holder if their marriage or civil partnership ends. 

The main purposes of the bill are to prioritize Caymanians in job applications, manage population growth, and help provide fair access to residency. The CPA has become one of the most significant immigration law changes in recent years. However, there have been criticisms about non-specified aspects of the Act that could cause future issues and confusion. Critics from HSM Cayman, a full-service law firm in the Cayman Islands, hold the position that there are issues with the CPA that were not addressed before its passing. 

Critiques Of The CPA

One of the HSM Cayman’s mentioned issues includes the lack of explanation of what the prescribed circumstances will be to permit an individual to change their employer within the first two years of employment. 

Another HSM critique is the number of changes, especially regarding spouses who are “stay-at-home” parents, and married to someone who has a Residency and Employment Rights Certificate (RERC). The married unemployed spouse without a RERC would be labelled a dependent on their spouse’s RERC, and HSM critics point out that in circumstances where the marriage breaks down, or the RERC-holding spouse dies, the other person would be unable to apply for their own RERC and would potentially have to leave the Cayman Islands. 

HSM critics also argue that aspects of the CPA seem to penalize individuals who marry a person with a different term limit from themselves. Said individuals would acquire the term limit of the person with the least amount of time left in the Cayman Islands.

What is the CPA Responding to?

The Cayman Islands government claims that these reforms are intended to combat issues Caymanians face in obtaining jobs, as well as to manage the population. Press-released data of the last six months of 2024 indicate that the unemployment rate of the Cayman Islands is at 2.4%. Analyst expectations from the Trading Economics project a trend suggesting that the unemployment rate in 2025 will be 3.50% and 4.20% in 2026. Population-similar nations, Antigua and Barbuda, have an estimated unemployment rate of 7% with some data presenting the rate at 5% and other data claiming it’s up to about 9%. Unemployment is on the decline in the Cayman Islands; however, the majority of workers on the islands are not Caymanians.

Data from fall 2024 and early 2025 Labour Force Surveys suggest that roughly 63% of the Cayman Islands workforce are non-permanent Caymanian nationals, which contributes to the concern for more nationals having access to jobs in their own market. 

Regarding population growth management, the estimated current population of the Cayman Islands is about 90,000, which is 17,000 more than the 2021 census that reported around 71,000; reports also estimate that over half of this population is foreign workers, with the majority coming from Jamaica and the Philippines. The Cayman Islands have experienced a large growth in population primarily due to the rise of expatriate, or foreign, workers seeking jobs in the islands’ strong financial and tourism economies. This population rise has been credited by some Caymanians as the reason for surging housing prices, infrastructure demand issues, public services, and the loss of culture due to the lack of native Caymanians on the island.

All of these factors motivated the Caymanian Government to revise and implement stricter immigration and worker permit legislation. The critiques of the HSM, and the fact that many of the foreign workers who come to the Cayman Islands to work rely on these jobs to support their families present and abroad, complicate the CPA’s reception. On one hand is the Caymanian worker who sees the jobs around them becoming increasingly occupied by foreign workers and the rise of population straining public services, and on the other hand, there is the poor foreign worker who needs to utilize the Cayman growing tourism and economic sector to provide for themselves and their loved ones. The CPA’s passing has secured its implementation and has left both sides to hope for harmony in the Cayman Islands.