There are three things about the “Status for PRC Holders” controversy that I think bear repeating and correcting.

The first is the mantra that there is a quick-fix piece of legislation that the One Bermuda Alliance Government could pass in the House of Assembly that would allow us to quickly shut the door on granting status to eligible PRC-holders, thereby thwarting the effect of the Chief Justice’s decision.

There is not. We can’t thumb our noses at our Supreme Court any more than the British Cabinet can thumb its nose at its Supreme Court, or the US Congress can thumb its noses at decisions made in the US Justice System.

Legislators have the power to make laws. Courts have the power to interpret them. If there is something the courts find is wrong with a piece of legislation, then the Act can be changed by the legislators to repair it.

But legislators can’t tell the Supreme Court what to do, and can’t reject a decision once it has been made.

Laws cannot be made retroactive. For example, if we decided to allow possession of marijuana in small quantities, we couldn’t make the new law retroactive to undo the records of all those who have been convicted before.

In the same way, you can’t make it unlawful to paint cars green, and then charge someone with possession of a green car because you have a picture of his green car taken five years before the law took effect. That’s obviously not fair. In the US, the Constitution expressly forbids doing such a thing. So the moment the Progressive Labour Party passed the amendment to the Immigration Act back in 2001 that created this PRC situation, it became the law of the land.

Any legislation we try to pass now will be seen as the Government of Bermuda trying to take back rights already conferred by the amendment. That can’t be fair. If we did what the PLP suggests, and a PRC holder lost his right to be given status, he’d most likely sue the Government. He would expect not only to get status, he would expect the Court to award him damages and order the Government to pay his legal bills.

If there were a lot of people who chose to sue, the Government would lose an awful lot of money, which we can ill afford, for no good reason. That’s something no one wants.

The second thing I think we need to focus on is the PLP’s often-repeated claim that the OBA has somehow been complicit in all this, because we need the votes, or because the new status-holders will alter the voting profile of the Bermuda population in such a way that the PLP will never win an election again.

That’s absurd. How could anyone know who these new Bermudians will vote for? They are from all over the place — from a variety of social and economic backgrounds and from countries all over the world — Barbados, the UK, the United States, Jamaica, Portugal and Canada to name a few.

They don’t have to tell Immigration who they hang out with or what their voting preferences are. So how could we have a clue how they’re going to vote?

They live in areas throughout Bermuda, so no matter what their political likes and dislikes are, the 1,455 people whose applications we are going to have to approve if they choose to apply for status could not seriously harm either party’s chances of winning the next election.

Last, but by no means least, we need to focus on the fact that these people are neither depriving Bermudians of land or jobs. They are already employed in jobs some of them have had for many years. They have full freedom of movement, free of immigration control. They already own or rent houses.

If they decide to invest or reinvest in the real estate market, that can only do us good as we struggle to recover from the recession. I know a lot of people who want to sell, or want to rent, who will be very glad these new Bermudians may churn the market up a bit.

So look, please don’t let Marc Bean and his cohorts pull the wool over your eyes. The reality is this controversy is more about stirring up trouble for this OBA Government than it is about the principles they say they’re defending. They need to give it a rest!