Dear Sir,

Your opinion piece today (The Royal Gazette, July 25) was 20/20 hindsight; it is very easy now to lambast the One Bermuda Alliance for its Pathways to Status initiative. If I remember correctly, it released a document with the intention of bringing Bermuda into line with the accepted guidelines of the European Court of Human Rights.

You can say they should have done it this way or that way, or at a different, more sensitive time, but what I would like to know is do you fundamentally agree with the content? And if so, surely the right time is sooner rather than later.

Michael Fahy has taken a lot of flak for how he has handled a number of issues, but in this case his motives were genuine. I do not believe that the initiative had anything to do with gaining more votes for the OBA. How do you know which party any person would vote for?

Of course, there is the perception that all the new status recipients would be white and therefore vote OBA, but that isn’t true, either: many who could qualify for status could be of Caribbean or other origin. The issue here is: “What is the right thing to do?”

The right thing is to adopt a policy that is fair to families, fair to people who have spent a significant part of their life contributing to Bermuda.

During the last few years of the Progressive Labour Party’s time in power, we lost a lot of good people; we lost some companies, too. This was a direct result of the xenophobic attitude of the Government at that time. If some of those people had been granted their status, they would still be here today, contributing to our economy.

I hope everyone took note of what John Wight had to say last week: our population is in decline, getting older, and every year more of a burden on the taxpayers. We need more people, regardless of their colour, political affiliation or nationality. That is a simple economic fact.

I hope the new government understands this, and if it is truly a party for all Bermuda, it will address the status issue. Yes, it will ruffle a few feathers, but it is “the right thing to do”.

ALAN GAMBLE