Guest workers are people not commodities
REGARDING essential workers: all workers are essential to those who seek to employ them. ('Population regime names crucial jobs', 6 March and 10 March) The States pen-pushers are out of touch with employers' needs. They rate permits on salaries alone – must be essential if they earn a lot. Special permits for white-collar workers – 'come and stay'. Guest workers should not be discriminated against on the basis of the jobs they do or the country they come from. These are people, not commodities to be used and thrown away like a washing machine when its five-year guarantee expires.
In this day of PC, these new laws are not PC. They border on racial discrimination.
The States needs to hold fire on these new laws and see what happens when the UK exits the EU. We have never had an open border. EU citizens could not come to the island and claim benefit, as they do in the UK. We have never had full benefits from the EU, only laws enforced on us, and being Guernsey born we have no real rights in the EU.
Will Great Britain enforce a closed border for employment on us as they want for the UK?
Please, States members, remember these are people's lives. They have a need to work, they are not statistics on a piece of paper.
Our States leader sees Guernsey as some sort of Utopia and wants to make it the happiest place to live. Maybe for the few, but for the rest of us it will be more like Dystopia.
J. GOULD,
74, Hauteville,
St Peter Port.
