The Tribune

SHANE Gibson's threat to demand every company applying for a foreigner to justify its needs before his department will issue a Labour Certificate has certainly stirred up a hornet's nest of resentment among the business community -- a section of the community that Prime Minister Christie is going to need if he wants to keep Bahamians employed.

The statement in itself was the essence of dumbness. When one realises that the Labour Certificate is only a request to the department as to whether it has a Bahamian on its register with the necessary job requirements, one wonders what justification Mr Gibson is looking for, and why he made his threat. If there is no one on the Labour Board's register, then all the Labour Certificate does is record that fact. If there is someone available -- we presume -- the Board also states the fact. Whatever it is, the Labour Certificate is just one of the many documents that has to be collected for the completed application to be sent to the Immigration Board. It is the Immigration Department that makes the final decision and if any justification, or further explanation is needed, then it is in that department that the convincing is done.

However, no employer should be bullied into taking anyone on his staff just because government wants him to fill quotas. No one, but the employer himself, knows his own business. Only he knows the type of person needed on his team. Government can use the public's money to pad its ministries with unemployables to secure the vote at election time. However, a businessman cannot afford that. He has to get production -- and expert production -- for every dollar spent, so that his product can compete in the marketplace. Also his company has to produce a marketable product at a competitive price.

Mr Gibson, a labour unionists not a businessman, obviously cannot comprehend this.

No sensible business person would import foreign talent if he could find a qualified Bahamian with an impressive work ethic. The whole exercise is too time consuming, too expensive - what with the cost of advertising, transport and high immigration fees, not to mention the frustration of having to deal with government, it is an exercise that any sensible business person would avoid. A foreign employee only adds to the debit side of the business. So, if this country were blessed with business people at the helm, as soon as an application arrived at Immigration for foreign staff, it would be a signal that the foreigner, for one reason or another, was really needed for that business. Business persons, unlike government ministers, do not have other people's money to waste. They are reluctantly digging into their own pockets. They must be convinced that the decision to add a particular foreigner to their staff will pay dividends. If they could find a Bahamian who could do this, Immigration would never hear from them.

The Tribune, for example, has never applied for an expatriate who was not needed. However, for political reasons the PLP -- from almost the day in 1967 that it was first elected to govern -- tried to control The Tribune through Immigration. As the newspaper grew, we needed qualified people to train our young staff -- at the time we were the only newspaper doing any training. When Immigration refused the needed work permits, we didn't just hire anyone to do a third rate job -- Bahamians who would boldly tell us after we had trained them that they would train no other Bahamian because the trainee might outshine them. We closed the department and did the work ourselves. The hours were long and hard.

The reason we were always the first with almost every new machine on the market in our industry was because the machines were replacing the Bahamians who we could not find, and the foreigners we were not allowed to hire to train them. A blind government pushed us further ahead faster than we had initially planned.

We always agreed with the late Norman Solomon that restrictions should be lifted from Immigration. Business persons would pay Immigration fees to have whatever qualified staff that was needed, which would allow a business to grow and expand. Such businesses would have to hire more Bahamians who in turn would learn on the job. Eventually, by natural growth, development -- and improved academic standards -- highly qualified Bahamians would make the importation of foreign staff unnecessary.

But, the Immigration policy to date is stunting the growth of this country, causing animosity in the business community for a government that is either unsure of itself or ignorant of the needs of entrepreneurs who have to have freedom in which to grow. When a business prospers, so does its workforce and so does the country.

But we are hardly into the second month of this new government than we are seeing a lot of little political sputniks blasting off in all directions with their own policies, directives and missions. Meanwhile, like the Buddha, Mr Christie sits quietly in the background. The same happened in his last five years of government when Bahamians lost confidence in his leadership.

As businessman Rick Lowe says in a letter published on this page today, Prime Minister Christie appears to be a "nice guy" and one tends to blame his associates when they make threatening statements. However, Mr Lowe is starting to have a change of heart. "However," he writes, "if the threats don't cease one must then believe that Mr Christie approves the comments and is therefore party to them."

Silence, Mr Christie, means consent. We think a clarification of Mr Gibson's recent Immigration/Labour statements need clarification to restore confidence in the business community.