More than 200 applicants for permanent residence who were denied that immigration status since 2017 have filed challenges to those decisions, according to records.
The Cayman Islands government began hearing applications for permanent residence or the lifetime right to remain in Cayman in mid-2017 after a two-and-a-half year delay during which a moratorium had been placed on the processing of the requests.
From June 2017 to February 2018, a total of 591 residency applications were approved and another 374 were rejected. According to figures released by the Cabinet office, a total of 226 applicants who were denied in their initial hearing filed appeals of those decisions in 2017 and 2018. That number represents about 60 per cent. of the total number of denied applications during that period however only seven of those appeals have so far been heard by the Immigration Appeals Tribunal.
Prior to 2017 relatively few appeals concerning permanent residence applications were filed. According to the records, 42 appeals each were filed in 2013 and 2014, just 18 were filed in 2015 and 22 in 2016. All of those appeals were filed before government began hearing the backlog of some 1,200 permanent residency applications during the course of 2017. The initial hearing stage of the residency case backlog has now been completed but it is anticipated that the next stage of the appeals process for permanent residence applicants may take some time to resolve.
