Immigration staffing will be boosted by ten new hires as the department copes with a rising workload in nearly every area of operation.

Funding of the department which Immigration Minister David Burch recently admitted was overloaded with work with boxes piling up in the corridor has also gone up 18 percent.

Budget figures showed processed work permits were up from 7,590 to 8,357, temporary work permits had risen by nearly two thousand to 10,343 while landing permits rose to 6,160.

Junior Immigration Minister Walter Roban revealed on December 31st, 2007 there were 11,200 standard work permit holders – 600 more than on the same day a year before.

New passport requirements in the US has led to seven thousand more status registry entries as Bermudians sought the required stamp.

The number of foreign nationals asked to leave leapt from 48 to 77 while foreign nationals put on the stop list rose from 69 to 112.

The figures also revealed the average wait for one to five-year permits was ten weeks but recently some employers have been complaining of waits of up to five months to get work permits.

Opposition MP Trevor Moniz said staff had more work than they could cope with while his colleague Jon Brunson said business expected fast results.

However Mr. Roban said when there were long waits for work permits it was usually due to incomplete applications.

"I don't think a five months turn around is a common thing. It isn't because someone is just sitting on it."

Opposition Works and Engineering Minister Patricia Gordon-Pamplin said carpenters and plumbers were complaining that work was being given to people on work permits without being advertised.

But Mr. Roban said the law remained the same — jobs must be advertised on three consecutive occasions.

MPs also touched on the controversial Bermuda Immigration and Protection Amendment Act 2007 — which aims to protect the Island's small land mass from foreign ownership.

Since the law came into effect Immigration had received 51 applications for licenses for property purchases from foreign spouses — of those 62 percent of those were processed within the target of 20 days, said Mr. Roban, and 84 percent within 25 days.

Mrs. Gordon-Pamplin said the law could create inequities with families.

For instance a Bermudian married to another Bermudian could buy as many properties as they wished yet a sibling who had chosen to marry a foreigner faced difficulties in accruing property they might want to pass on to their children.

She raised concerns about expatriate workers being crammed into overcrowded houses where they slept in shifts on the same beds.

And she also wondered why information on immigration cards about where and what departing students were studying hadn't been handed over to the Workforce Development initiative which aims to match students to suitable jobs.

However Mr. Roban said the forms were not always completed properly and the new system will be more efficient.

Opposition MPs wondered why only an extra $1,000 was being spent on training considering the pressure Immigration was under and the fact new staff were being added while the attrition rate seemed high.

And Mr. Moniz chided the Government for not sharing its statistics-heavy Budget brief with the Opposition which he said would have helped improve the level of debate — something the Premier had recently called for.

His colleague Mark Pettingill wondered why there were so few deportations given that there were 1,666 investigations.