The Cayman Islands is a British Overseas Territory in the western Caribbean and one of the world's premier offshore financial centres, with a financial sector that manages assets exceeding several times the GDP of its entire Caribbean region combined. This extraordinary financial concentration — in a territory of only approximately 70,000 people — creates a unique migration dynamic: a small island population supplemented by a substantial professional expatriate community working in financial services, alongside lower-wage workers from Jamaica, Honduras, the Philippines, and other countries who provide the service labour that the local population cannot supply.
The Cayman Islands' financial services sector specializes in investment funds, insurance, banking, and corporate registration, attracting professionals from the UK, Canada, the United States, and other financial centres. These highly paid expatriates contribute significantly to the territory's tax revenues and consumer spending, but their presence also drives up housing costs and contributes to economic inequality between the expatriate professional class and Caymanians in lower-wage occupations.
The Cayman Islands manages labour immigration through a work permit system that in principle prioritizes Caymanians for available jobs. The "Caymanianization" policy requires employers to demonstrate that no qualified Caymanian is available before hiring a foreign national. In practice, skills shortages in finance, law, technology, and medicine mean that significant numbers of work permits are issued, and the non-Caymanian population has grown to represent approximately 40% of the total.
Long-term residents who have lived and worked in the Cayman Islands for decades may not be eligible for permanent residence or citizenship, creating a class of "permanent temporary residents" whose economic contributions are accepted but whose belonging is not legally recognized. This tension between the economic need for foreign workers and the desire to maintain a distinct Caymanian identity and workforce priority is a recurring theme in the territory's immigration policy debates.
Population: approximately 70,000
Capital: George Town
Status: British Overseas Territory
GDP per capita: approximately USD 58,000
Non-Caymanian residents: approximately 40% of population
Financial assets managed: trillions of USD
