?For all the talk of be­com­ing a "de­vel­oped" na­tion, when is T&T go­ing to be­gin to start act­ing like one?

I re­fer to the ut­ter back­ward­ness of the Im­mi­gra­tion De­part­ment's process­es for over­seas na­tion­als ob­tain­ing the new ma­chine read­able pass­ports. In ef­fect, the Gov­ern­ment is pro­hibit­ing the free­dom, and the ba­sic hu­man right, of na­tion­als liv­ing abroad to trav­el–un­less they have ac­cess to many thou­sands of dol­lars to ac­com­mo­date Im­mi­gra­tion's ar­cha­ic reg­u­la­tions. We live in New Zealand where my wife and youngest daugh­ter re­quire the new T&T pass­ports. They ap­plied months ago for them but in­stead were giv­en an ex­ten­sion to their cur­rent pass­ports to De­cem­ber 31. Af­ter this date they can­not trav­el any­where–un­less we spend over TT$40,000 to ful­fil Im­mi­gra­tion's in­sane de­mand that they trav­el to Lon­don–a 24-hour flight–to have new pass­port pho­tos tak­en.

Do the bu­reau­crats at T&T Im­mi­gra­tion re­al­ly not be­lieve that here in First World de­vel­oped New Zealand we ac­tu­al­ly have the ca­pac­i­ty to take pho­tographs for ma­chine read­able pass­ports that ad­here to in­ter­na­tion­al re­quire­ments? I re­cent­ly re­newed three such British pass­ports in Auck­land, with new pho­tos and ap­pli­ca­tion forms, that were re­turned to us in less than ten days for a few hun­dred dol­lars. Why should our fam­i­ly have to pay so much mon­ey to trav­el so far for such a ridicu­lous rea­son, when the pho­to and form-fill­ing re­quire­ments can so eas­i­ly be done here, and post­ed? Can some­one please ex­plain? It is not as though they are even ap­ply­ing for pass­ports for the first time–they are just re­new­ing their ex­ist­ing ones. We do not have $40,000 ly­ing around to spare. Un­less we can bor­row this sum, my wife and child will not be able to trav­el any­where for the next two years, when they then be­come el­i­gi­ble for New Zealand pass­ports. And that day can­not come soon enough.

In the mean­time we are be­ing held hostage to id­i­ot­ic Third World bu­reau­cra­cy. It makes a to­tal mock­ery of T&T's "de­vel­oped sta­tus" as­pi­ra­tions.�So, please Mar­tin Joseph, as Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty is there any valid rea­son why we can't send your de­part­ment, or your Lon­don of­fice, the pho­tos and forms?

Mark Mered­ith

Auck­land, New Zealand