The Senate may have approved immigration amendments hotly opposed by the Progressive Labour Party — but Opposition senators were nonetheless steadfast in their disapproval.

The reason why no “nay” votes came from PLP senators Marc Daniels, Renee Ming and Diallo Rabain was because the Upper House did not put the Bermuda Immigration and Protection Amendment Act 2015 to a formal vote.

“We voiced our displeasure throughout the debate,” Senator Rabain explained.

“The only time a vote is taken is when we do what is known as a call for division, when the clerk will call everyone’s names and ask for a yea or nay.

“It’s not as if we did not vote ‘no’, but there was no formal collection of names.

“We did not support the Bill, and we made that very clear.

“At the end of the day, it was going to go through. Not only the Government Senators but the Independent Senators registered their approval.”

The immigration Bill will face a fierce contest after the House of Assembly resumes in May, and the legislation will have to return to the Senate if amendments are made.

The capacity of immigration issues to bitterly polarise Bermudians has been cited as the very reason for a bipartisan assessment of reforms.

Speaking to The Royal Gazette ahead of Wednesday’s demonstration at the Cabinet building, PLP Member of Parliament Kim Wilson said: “We have such a history of contention surrounding immigration that it has become a situation where we need to have this dialogue and reach some kind of consensus.”

Ms Wilson said Opposition rancour over immigration was by no means limited to Immigration Minister Michael Fahy’s bill tabled in last Friday’s Senate, but touched on “all policies that have come out since 2012”.

Ms Wilson added that the polarisation needed to be addressed because of the likelihood of yo-yo reversals of One Bermuda Alliance legislation — itself a refute of PLP legislation — in the event that the Opposition won the next elections.

“Every policy or law passed now can be reversed in a couple of years,” she pointed out.

The legislation caps the amount of land available to non-Bermudians at 2,500 acres — a bar that was raised from 2,000 acres under the PLP Government in 2012, when legislators dispensed with a controversial law that required Bermudians married to non-Bermudians to obtain a licence for the purchase of their own homes.

During that debate, the then National Security Minister Wayne Perinchief described property issues as “the third rail of Bermuda politics”, observing that few local issues “evoke such strong emotions as land”.

That legislation did not entirely dispatch with licensing requirements, however — amendments made a year later under the new OBA Government achieved that end, in July 2013.

If approved, these latest immigration amendments will open the way for a limited amount of property sales.

Earlier this month the House of Assembly heard that non-Bermudians owned 2,174 acres of Bermuda’s land as of October 31, 2014 — a figure that did not include holders of permanent resident’s certificates.