Not only is no man an island, no island is an island entirely of itself. And Bermuda provides a prime case in point.

Our geographic isolation notwithstanding, throughout its history Bermuda has always been a mid-Atlantic extension of the world around it — never standing at one remove from the peoples, countries and events surrounding us.

This involvement in the world beyond our shores is reflected in the make-up of our population: multiracial and multiethnic since the very earliest days of our permanent settlement.

Bermuda has absorbed and assimilated peoples from Europe and the West Indies, from Africa and the Azores, from North America and Asia, and the sum has proved to be far greater than the individual parts. Our strength as a community lies in our diversity. Our differences unite us. They fuel innovation. They shape our cultural and character. They define who we are as Bermudians.

Yet it’s true to say every wave of newcomers initially has been eyed warily. They have been met with suspicion and, sometimes, outright hostility.

This is understandable to some degree. Bermuda is an exceptionally small island, after all: its natural, economic and cultural resources have been always as very limited as its land area. And it has been feared always that placing additional demands on them in the form of additional people will overwhelm those resources and, invariably, displace the native-born population.

But that has never happened. In fact, history demonstrates Bermuda’s economic, political and social development have all been spurred by the development of our human resources in the form of new people who have helped to introduce new ideas and new ways of doing things to our remote and sometimes overly tradition-bound society.

Nevertheless, immigration policy remains a lightning-rod topic in Bermuda politics. It’s only rarely discussed dispassionately and with an eye on the best possible outcomes for both our long-term residents and those Bermudians who worry about being squeezed out of a diminished, post-recessionary labour market.

In the aftermath of the Great Recession, we are all of us concerned about our careers, our homes, our children, our schools, medical care for our ageing parents and the growing number of unwelcome knock-on effects being produced by a stagnant economy.

But the reality is the economy will continue to stagnate and the knock-on effects will continue to increase in strength and damaging impact unless we take steps to ameliorate them. For Bermuda’s population is dwindling and, along with it, so is the tax base that finances all of our necessary social programmes and services.

In recent years we have been travelling along a knife-edged social and economic path, and we have no choice but to act along sensible and pragmatic new lines. The status quo is clearly unsustainable over the long term. As the philosopher Francis Bacon warned, “He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils, for time is the greatest innovator.”

One such remedy was unveiled last week. Changes to our immigration rules now provide an easier route to Bermuda status for those who have lived here more than 20 years and open up long-term residency to those who have worked here for 15 years.

These are simply steps to try to rationalise the existing situation; they hardly open the floodgates of unrestricted immigration or signal an imminent wholesale displacement of the native-born population, as some have attempted to suggest.

And it’s both distasteful and entirely illogical to assume those given grants of Bermuda status under the new regulations — and thereby entitled to be added to the electoral rolls — will be monolithic in their voting habits.

To view them as mindless pawns on the Bermudian political chessboard, to be moved hither and yon by one party at the expense of the other, is to engage in the worst kinds of stereotyping and alarmism.

Not only did Bermuda need more streamlined and fairer immigration protocols for those already here, it requires an entirely more level-headed approach to the issue moving forward.

For the unavoidable fact is we cannot grow the economy without also growing the population. And we cannot grow the population without making it easier and more welcoming for people, whose help we want to shore up the economic underpinnings of our still-enviable way of life, to work and live here.

We are, after all, all still paying the price for some ill-considered restrictions on work permits introduced at the height of the recession for domestic political purposes.

These capricious moves may have indeed swayed a few votes. But, far more significantly, they served to amplify and extend the effects of the worldwide economic downturn on Bermuda, making the island far less appealing as an offshore business jurisdiction. Some new business we might otherwise have attracted opted to set up shop elsewhere. And some business we already had opted to leave.

This is certainly not to suggest we need an open-door policy at this juncture. Bermuda is too compact and fragile, its socioeconomic fundamentals too delicately balanced, to ever allow for anything but the most controlled and well-managed population growth.

But maintaining the largely ad hoc and unsatisfactory immigration system we have now is clearly no longer an option.

Simply put, we must learn to face the truth about our new situation and straitened new conditions, and to act accordingly. Bermudians are better placed than most people to realise you can’t stand still when a hurricane is bearing down on you. And the hurricane-force winds of change that have swept the world in recent years have certainly not spared us.

We can no longer afford to indulge partisans and propagandists at both ends of the political spectrum who fall back on circular arguments and an insidious kind of self-reinforcing logic that cannot be countered by mere facts whenever the subject of immigration reform is broached.

We cannot waste any more time on supposed public debates on the issue, which degenerate inevitably into cacophonous screaming matches and are more aimed at securing a short-term electoral advantage than at advancing Bermuda’s long-term interests. And we desperately need more elected officials whose commitment to the public interest overrides their narrow party-political interests.

Because the bleak reality is that without new remedies in the area of immigration, Bermuda can indeed expect all manner of new evils in the not too distant future.