Bermuda needs to relax its immigration policies and vastly improve the education level of locals if it is to remain competitive in the global job market, a meeting heard today.

Employment expert Doug Soares told Hamilton Rotarians that the Island needed to swiftly set a national target to ensure more Bermudians obtained university degrees and that it should consider a new motto for the country, to inspire people to “engage in productive lives”.

He said “no amount of badmouthing foreigners” would change the fact that jobs were being lost in Bermuda because of globalisation — and the only way to deal with that was to produce a better qualified workforce.

“Long ago, governments around the world liberalised their immigration policies to remain competitive,” said Mr Soares. “We must do the same in Bermuda if we are to remain viable.

“Put bluntly, the unearned privilege of being born Bermudian is diminishing rapidly. As frightening as that is for our undereducated workforce, our Department of Immigration can no longer protect us, as it could ten or 15 years ago.

“Our best defence against the forces of global competition is to rapidly improve the education level of the Bermudian workforce. We must do it urgently.”

Mr Soares said that, according to the 2010 Census, 26 percent of working age Bermudians possess no academic qualifications at all and only 19 percent have degrees.

He added: “Although no data exists to know exactly how many jobs in Bermuda require a degree, the fact that we import 5,161 work permit holders with degrees indicates that our economy demands a far more highly educated workforce than Bermudians supply.

“Census data from other countries also strongly suggests that the rate at which we produce university educated citizens is very low. Degree holders in the United States account for 31 percent of the working population.

“In the UK, it’s 29 percent; Canada, 27 percent; Singapore, 23 percent; Switzerland, 22 percent; and Ireland, 22 percent. It is clear: Bermuda lags behind many of our competitor jurisdictions and we must do better.”

The management consultant said thousands of jobs had been lost in Bermuda due to the impact of globalisation over the last 12 to 15 years.

“I am talking about how the internet, technological advances and the relaxation of immigration policies around the world is making it so quick and easy to eliminate or move jobs out of Bermuda,” he said.

He suggested setting a national target to “vastly improve the number of university graduate Bermudians”.

“Perhaps we should aim to have 25 percent of Bermudians with a degree by 2020; 35 percent by 2030; and 40 percent by 2040,” he said.

“I am not sure what targets are realistic but you get the idea. Without targets, there is no focused action and no accountability. We are now setting targets and measuring outcomes in our public education system, so we need to do it at the tertiary level.

“The number of university graduate Bermudians improved from 14 percent in 2000 to 19 percent in 2010, so we are moving in the right direction, but we must accelerate our rate of progress.”