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Saturday, July 12, 2025

Govt must be humane on A-2 visa issue

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20140114

For­mer For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Ralph Maraj says the Gov­ern­ment must be hu­mane in seek­ing to dis­con­tin­ue the re­quire­ment for A-2 visas to be grant­ed na­tion­als work­ing at the New York con­sulate.Maraj said that in the wake of a rec­om­men­da­tion by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan to not re­new ex­pired A-2 visas for work­ers at the con­sulate.This stems from the un­re­solved dis­missal of eight work­ers at the con­sulate in June 2012. The work­ers have tak­en le­gal ac­tion against the Gov­ern­ment, seek­ing to be com­pen­sat­ed for the dis­missal.An A-2 visa is a diplo­mat­ic, non-im­mi­grant one which al­lows for­eign ac­cred­it­ed of­fi­cials out­side of the diplo­mat­ic cat­e­go­ry to en­ter the US and work with their gov­ern­ment.Maraj, who served as min­is­ter in a PNM Gov­ern­ment, said yes­ter­day such visas have ben­e­fits.

He said lo­cal­ly hired staff from the coun­try in which the mis­sion was lo­cat­ed would elim­i­nate the need to pro­vide hous­ing for them which would be re­quired if staff were hired from T&T.

Maraj said the mat­ter could be re­solved if cer­tain ba­sic prin­ci­ples were ob­served.He said T&T "must not do any­thing il­le­gal in the US, we must com­ply with the US law and we should not in any­way jeop­ar­dise our re­la­tions with the US."Ac­cord­ing to Maraj the Gov­ern­ment "must en­sure that the con­sulate is prop­er­ly staffed with com­pe­tent trust­wor­thy in­di­vid­u­als who can car­ry out the work of the mis­sion." Say­ing there should be no abuse of the sys­tem, he in­sist­ed:"Noth­ing should be done to give any un­fair ad­van­tage to any per­son or group of peo­ple."If in the light of what has been hap­pen­ing, any ad­just­ments have been made, the Gov­ern­ment should be as hu­mane as pos­si­ble in the treat­ment of those in­di­vid­u­als who are af­fect­ed."He said the Gov­ern­ment has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty "to be hu­mane to peo­ple, es­pe­cial­ly na­tion­als of T&T."

For­mer head of the for­eign ser­vice and per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs Lenore Dorset said it was not too late for me­di­a­tion in the mat­ter to en­sure the dis­missed work­ers got their just due.She said so in a state­ment to the me­dia on Sun­day. She said me­di­a­tion, in good faith, should be done "to en­sure that all those per­sons af­fect­ed, lo­cal­ly re­cruit­ed staff as well as A-2 visa hold­ers, re­ceive, at the very least, the mon­e­tary com­pen­sa­tion and con­di­tions of ser­vice for which they have le­git­i­mate ex­pec­ta­tions and right."Ac­cord­ing to Dorset, restora­tion of rep­u­ta­tion in the mat­ter of law-break­ing was an­oth­er mat­ter. She sug­gest­ed that fo­cus should be on at­tract­ing and keep­ing the best staff, at every lev­el, as it was crit­i­cal to at­tain­ing the Gov­ern­ment's pol­i­cy ob­jec­tives in in­ter­na­tion­al af­fairs.She called for wis­dom to pre­vail in the mat­ter.Not­ing she had fol­lowed de­vel­op­ments in the mat­ter over the past sev­er­al months, Dorset said a coun­try could choose from the le­git­i­mate op­tions avail­able to it in re­cruit­ing staff for its over­seas Mis­sions.She added, how­ev­er, that If it de­cid­ed not to use A-2 visas, that was its sov­er­eign right.

In­sist­ing there was no such thing as an "il­le­gal visa" which was used in dis­cus­sion on the is­sue, Dorset said: "That is an oxy­moron."Dorset said it was un­clear whether Ram­lo­gan had the ben­e­fit of le­gal opin­ion from the Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs on the is­sue."If he did, it is in­ter­est­ing that in­for­ma­tion con­cern­ing the use and pur­pose of the A-2 visa is not re­flect­ed in the de­ci­sion that was tak­en," Dorset added.Ac­cord­ing to Dorset: "The term 'lo­cal­ly re­cruit­ed' should not be ap­plied to the five per­sons at the Con­sulate Gen­er­al who were giv­en A2 visas, three of which have not been re­newed. "The Unit­ed States Em­bassy in Port-of-Spain is­sued those visas, in the first in­stance, at the re­quest of the min­istry, on the ad­vice of the Con­sulate Gen­er­al which de­sired to hire those in­di­vid­u­als who, I em­pha­sise, were not out of sta­tus in the Unit­ed States."She ex­plained: "Those in­di­vid­u­als trav­elled to or were al­ready in Port-of-Spain and were in­ter­viewed by the US Em­bassy, which grant­ed the visas, one of them be­ing an A3 visa, sub­se­quent­ly ad­just­ed to A-2. The visas per­mit­ted them to work nowhere in the US but at the Con­sulate Gen­er­al."Dorset want­ed to know: "Why are not all of our mis­sions over­seas op­er­at­ing with the same type of plan, for the non-diplo­mat­ic cat­e­go­ry of staff."The Min­istry of For­eign af­fairs is far too im­por­tant in the de­vel­op­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go, as our face to the out­side world, for its re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and role to be 'dumb­ed down'."In this con­text self-in­ter­est, on the part of any­one, in­clud­ing at the top ad­min­is­tra­tive lev­els, can­not be al­lowed to im­pede na­tion­al goals," the for­mer head of the for­eign ser­vice in­sist­ed.


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