This is the full text of an editorial from Cayman Net News warning of the dangers of term limits or rollover policies in the Cayman Islands:

For a long time before and after the renewal and enforcement of the immigration term limits or rollover policy in 2006, we warned of the likely consequences in several areas. However, our warnings fell largely on deaf ears amongst those in a position to have made a difference at the time.

One of the possible consequences we highlighted was the likelihood of job losses as a result of outsourcing. Our concern in this respect was based on the reported experience of Bermuda and its own six-year rollover policy, when Bermuda-based international companies had started to outsource jobs overseas because of difficulties associated with hiring foreign workers on limited-term work permits.

As companies sought to outsource overseas jobs that had previously been filled by expatriate employees on work permits in Bermuda, they would also outsource lower-level jobs that would ordinarily be filled by locals.

Now, in Cayman, just last week we had the news that Goldman Sachs, the world's largest global investment bank, will be cutting back operations in the Cayman Islands over the next 12 to 18 months.

According to the local manager of Goldman Sachs, Grant Jackson, the bank will be moving their fund accounting business off the island while continuing to run its investor services and corporate services businesses here in Cayman.

In other words, they are outsourcing some of the jobs hitherto done in the Cayman Islands.

Also last week, the Cayman Islands Tourism Association (CITA) announced that they will be submitting formal recommendations to the Ministry of Tourism on possible exemptions to the rollover policy.

CITA Executive Director Trina Christian pointed to an online survey recently conducted on the CITA website concerning rollover. Based on recent figures, a majority of respondents strongly agreed that recruiting has become more difficult since the introduction of the rollover and it has had a negative effect on business.

Imagine that. Who could possibly have seen that coming? In fact, we have been warning for a long time of this and similar consequences of the rollover policy, but we have also been continually excoriated for our predictions by the current administration and its supporters.

Now, with an entire industry seemingly seeking exemption from the rollover, why stop there? Why should not the financial services sector seek a similar exemption? And the mere fact that extensive exemptions are now being sought surely means that the policy was misguided in the first place. Unless, of course, the objective is to grant blanket exemptions for entire business sectors, leaving categories such as domestic helpers as one of the few to which the policy will apply.

But, wait, that was one of the expressed and then denied targets of the policy.

In the meantime local businesses will continue to suffer, at a time of general economic downturn, when we all no doubt will also be asked to tighten our belts and contribute more to the country's treasury.

Throughout the debate on the rollover policy, politicians were playing on the fears of the electorate that they will no longer be masters in their own country.

But not once was the rollover policy justified by any empirical evidence. It has only ever been presented as a "good thing" and that we must blindly accept that assessment. To our knowledge there were, for example, no studies done of the economic impact on the country.

In place of a rational, fully-considered approach to this issue, all we had was scare-mongering, using the prospect of Cayman being overrun by foreigners if we didn't support this misguided and potentially economically disastrous policy.

This may have played well at the time to the perceived electoral power base and may have worked as a vote-winner, except for one small thing - the economy is likely to be in dire straits before the next election, exacerbated by the rollover policy. We warned some 18 months ago that the Opposition is waiting, patiently or not, in the wings, ready to make political hay out of the consequences, perhaps unintended but certainly forewarned, of the rollover policy.

The way things are going, they may have much to work with come May 2009.

We also said in an earlier editorial that time will tell who is right and who is wrong on the matter of the unintended consequences of the rollover policy and it looks as though time is beginning to do just that.