Immigration Minister Quinton Edness has put employers who flaunt hiring laws on notice that such behaviour will not be tolerated.

Mr. Edness told The Royal Gazette that recently several cases had come to the Immigration Department's attention of employers withholding qualified Bermudians' applications and applying to bring in non-Bermudians.

And while he refused to disclose details of the cases, Mr. Edness said most centred around jobs in the "catering'' business.

"We've had particular difficulties in the area of waiters,'' he said. "It has come to my attention that there has been more than one waiter who has applied for a job and has not received the courtesy of a reply to say they were not accepted.

"There is a shortage of waiters in this country and we have to permit waiters to be brought in to provide services for our guests and locals. But we insist when a waiter is qualified and does not have a record detrimental to his career he or she should be employed.

"I want to give notice to employers who may wish to cheat in this regard that they should not do it.'' Mr. Edness noted that his Ministry had two major responsibilities -- to protect Bermudians in employment and to "assist companies to thrive by having the human resources which they require to grow and get the job done''.

"Occasionally there is a conflict between these two major responsibilities,'' he said. "But it is always possible to strike a balance and work things out.'' Immigration Department enjoyed a "very good'' relationship with employers and it was based on trust, Mr. Edness said.

"It is for this reason,'' he explained, "when an application is made by an employer to the Department of Immigration and the position has been advertised and the employer may submit names of Bermudians who have applied or in some instances did not get any response at all from Bermudians, when they say they have not received an application from a qualified Bermudian or no application at all, for the most part the Department accepts this as the truth.'' Hiring crackdown While stressing that "most employers play fair with qualified Bermudians'' and were prepared to train Bermudians who were not qualified, Mr. Edness said: "Recently, however, we have found that a number of qualified Bermudians did apply and the information of their applications were not passed on to the Immigration Department.

"Generally speaking we're satisfied this does not happen. But there seems to be some genuine cases of qualified Bermudians who have applied for jobs and were turned down and this is very troubling to me.

"There are some companies for reasons only known to them who will rather deny a qualified Bermudian the opportunity.'' In cases where there is a qualified Bermudian available and an employer applies to bring someone in, it is turned down, Mr. Edness noted. And the law requires employers to disclose all information they receive from qualified Bermudians.

If an employer lies about such information, it is an offence under the 1956 Immigration and Protection Act and the employer can be fined or sent to jail.

But Mr. Edness pointed out that Immigration could not be a watch dog everywhere.

"The only way Immigration can find out about this (employers lying) is if it is brought to their attention because we don't have enough staff to visit every workplace to ensure that this is not happening,'' he said.

"I would ask all qualified Bermudians when they apply for a job and have a suspicion that they are not being considered or that their name has been put forward to Immigration in a manner that does not reflect their qualifications to contact either the Chief Immigration Officer (Martin Brewer) or the assistant Chief Immigration Officer (John Payne).

"It must be made clear that the protection of qualified Bermudians in jobs is taken seriously by Government and we cannot permit some employers to flaunt the law.''