It’s time to step back from the threatening brinkmanship which has been masquerading as political discourse in Bermuda in recent weeks.

It’s time to dispense with the overheated rhetoric and sometimes ludicrously overblown claims and counterclaims surrounding the question of immigration reform.

And it is long past time to begin discussing the issue in the spirit of honesty, transparency and goodwill.

This week a call for an “island-wide withdrawal of labour” — a wildcat general strike by any other name — was issued, quickly retracted and then reissued by a pressure group opposed to the immigration policies.

And this underscores just what a dangerous impasse we have reached thanks to a combination of political high-handedness on government’s part and unbridled political opportunism on the part of its opponents.

The proposed reforms introduced by government earlier this year are aimed at creating more streamlined, rationalised and humane pathways to Bermuda status and permanent residency for long-term guest workers and their families.

Either unmindful or, worse, entirely unconcerned with the potential for these changes to generate a community backlash, government is only belatedly making a public case for them now.

Compelling arguments touching on everything from economic necessity to fundamental human rights have been heard from the Cabinet level on down in recent days.

But the fact is government allowed the narrative on this contentious and complex issue to be wrested from its control very early on by announcing the reforms as a fact accompli, one not open to discussion. By turning a wilfully deaf ear to even the most legitimate concerns surrounding the proposed new immigration protocols, government is now reaping the whirlwind. So, unfortunately, are the rest of us.

Snarling and spiteful verbal exchanges have been at fever pitch everywhere from the debating chambers of the House of Assembly and the Senate to the radio phone-in shows to social media.

Placard-waving demonstrators have marched on Parliament Hill and disrupted rush-hour traffic heading into Hamilton. Positions have grown so increasingly polarised that while both sides are now paying lip service to the concept of a consensus-driven solution, the possibility of arriving at a compromise seems more remote than ever. But a just and equitable compromise is also more necessary now than ever.

Government’s tone-deafness to the public mood has allowed its opponents, both inside and outside Parliament, to portray the immigration revamp as a crude partisan political power grab. It’s now routinely being described as a naked effort to reshape the demographic future of Bermuda to ensure a built-in electoral advantage for the ruling party.

In fact, critics of the proposed reforms have attempted, with some success, to frame the stand-off into a street theatre morality play: politics writ large and in bold, dramatic strokes. They speak of a potentially cataclysmic conflict propelled by a coldly aloof government interested only in consolidating its own position and wholly indifferent to the needs of native-born Bermudians. This cartoonishly reductionist version of recent events dispenses with all logic, nuance and detail, bypassing the reasoning faculties and connecting directly with the man and woman on the street’s solar plexus — and emotions. As it’s fully intended to do.

The increasingly acute practical need to replenish the Island’s human capital in the face of a dwindling birth rate and an ever-shrinking tax base is never mentioned. Neither is the moral obligation to do right by way of those who, in some instances, have spent their entire professional lifetimes working in and contributing to Bermuda. And the dubious constitutional validity of some of our existing immigration laws, highlighted more than once by the Supreme Court, is a matter entirely more likely to be talked around than talked about by government’s detractors.

It’s increasingly clear many opponents of the reforms are actually more interested in toppling a government they view as weak and vulnerable than in overhauling an immigration system that has proved to be unworkable, unfair and, in some areas, unconstitutional.

But it’s also becoming clear these same critics have tapped into something fundamental in the post-recessionary Bermudian psyche. The immigration protests are feeding on public anger and discontent which stems less from the actual immigration proposals than they do from an ongoing sense of dislocation and general unease among Bermudians.

For the reality is that the end of a prolonged recession of unprecedented severity has not meant an end to financial hardship for many Bermudians. Wages remain stagnant, employment opportunities are limited and the cost of living continues to rise. A full-blown recovery remains a long-term and uncertain bet despite some encouraging indications of an upturn (what the finance minister likes to call “the green shoots” of new economic activity).

The middle-class and the middle-aged, the cement which holds the fragile Bermudian community together, continues to be wary about the present and anxious about the future — and their place in it. These are not people who usually define themselves in terms of ideology or party political affiliation. These are hard-working, well-educated and family-oriented Bermudians who feel life in this community used to be better for people like them — and they want the certainties and benefits of that older community back.

Any student of post-recessionary societies anywhere in the world can tell you that when opportunities have diminished, when the economic sphere remains problematic, people are prone to judge issues not based on abstract political, economic or even humanitarian principles but according to the perceived deservingness of recipients of what limited resources remain. The immigration issue is resonating perhaps more loudly than it would at other times precisely because many Bermudians see it as opening the door for redistribution from a deserving “us” to a less deserving, foreign-born “them”.

The supreme and sobering irony of their position, though, is that without growing the population Bermuda can never hope to regrow its stalled economy.

So the old certainties and benefits they yearn for will only slip further into history rather than be restored if we don’t reform our immigration policies. And this is why informed dialogue rather than adversarial politics as usual is called for at this crucial and delicate juncture.