LOL

The trouble with the idea of the H1B1 visa is that it is not a valid idea. It was picked up from a newspaper article and tries to solve a problem that is no longer valid. Moxey & company do not have a world view, or an appreciation of how to build a tech hub and neither does the government. It is the blind leading the blind.

The problem with the visa, is that to use it would require massive amounts of capital spending. They would have to build buildings on Grand Bahama, hire new remote management and create the technology infrastructure like data centers -- all for what -- to replace some workers that may get their visas back after the next American election.

On top of that, Grand Bahama doesn't have the social infrastructure for a few thousand tech workers. They are highly paid and expect amenities that Grand Bahama doesn't have. They will quit after a month of living in Grand Bahama and the company will lose massive amounts of money.

The skilled worker problem is now ameliorated with remote collaboration technology tools, moving satellite offices to places like Dubai where there are no visa problems, and moving their development to Canada where skilled workers are welcomed by immigration and they live in a first world country.

This is the most misguided and ineffectual piece of fluff that the government and the committee has come up with. And Senator Kwasi didn't even validate what they said and recommended. They just went ahead with it as if Moxey had come down from the mountain with inscribed tablets.

And the remark of organic growth is utterly stupid. Cayman Islands got over 100 blockchain companies and a $4 billion boost to the economy in two years. It has been more than 2 years since the Grand Bahama Tech Hub was announced, and nothing has been accomplished.

This is another case of ignorance, apathy, stalling, procrastination and lack of resolve to actually do anything beneficial to the Bahamas. Enacting a piece of legislation is a nothing way of trying to prove that you are doing something.

The tech hub will never happen because they know not what to do, and won't remedy that situation. It comes from supreme ego and not caring to find out what they don't know. They are content with silly little actions to maintain appearances.

More crumb-catching from the tourism table. No thanks.

Where is the tech hub on Grand Bahama??????????????????????????????????????

Half of the RFPs (Requests for Proposals) are cut and paste BS that doesn't apply to what they are requesting.

The Bahamian digital dollar hasn't been well thought out. They are a bunch of amateurs and babies in a world with technology sharks. Without the correct security policies and technologies, they are opening up the Bahamas to a serious monetary sovereign threat.

This is not news. This is Neil Hartnell being lazy.

China already owns The Bahamas, hook, line and sinker.

This is a naive and parochial view of most Bahamians, including the government. The Commercial Enterprises Bill doesn`t go far enough and will actually inhibit the goals of diversifying the economy.

The benefits to Bahamians has to be considered in terms of economic offset and not of immediate direct benefit to local Bahamians. It is a joke to suggest that the Family Islands are more amenable to tech enterprises because lack of competitor. Tech enterprises play in the global marketplace and not in the local space.

Tech enterprises need cheap energy, a highly skilled workforce and the soft parameters of a work environment. This means good grocery stores, abundant fast food places, a wide array of entertainment options for works who work hard and play hard. There must be pubs, sports facilities like squash courts and movie theaters. There must be stores and easy access to buying stuff on Amazon. There must be environment and infrastructure.

The $250,000 investment is a joke. The fastest growing companies are startups, and they invest in talent and not in buildings. They rent cheaply. They don`t have the money and the time to play the old fashioned games. They are launched in incubators cheaply. A good example is Cayman Enterprise City. You have to have $12,000 (an easily achievable sum) to rent office, shared receptionist and you get free imports for a year for every employee, and work permits issued in 48 hours at a fraction of the cost of Bahamian work permits. Their tech sector is growing so fast that they have created a second incubator called Cayman Tech. In the past year alone, these startups have contributed over $3 billion to the Cayman economy.

While we sit and navel gaze and try to figure out how much steak we can cut off racehorses, others just open the doors wide open with minimum entry barriers. One of the fastest growing tech sectors is in St. Kitt`s/Nevis and Antigua is gearing up as well. While we jaw and yack and argue, others are just doing it.

We do not have the mindset to do anything else except catch the crumbs off the table of those who are eating pie instead of carving it up for our share.

The thing is that the government doesn't know what they don't know and Kwasi is at the top of the list. His paper-shuffling and do-nothing approach hasn't landed us a GB tech hub. And now they are talking about copying Estonia for eGovernment. Sigh.

That LMAO after every post makes you look stupid, even though I know that you aren't. It's just like my grammy discovering emojis for the first time while texting.