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Tuesday, July 22, 2025

Law in breach of Caricom treaty, says Imbert

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20140411

Op­po­si­tion MP Colm Im­bert yes­ter­day claimed the Gov­ern­ment pre­sent­ed new leg­is­la­tion to al­low for every sin­gle vis­i­tor to this coun­try, in­clud­ing Cari­com na­tion­als and de­por­tees, to be fin­ger­print­ed.Speak­ing in the de­bate on the Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice) Bill, 2014, Im­bert said At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan made no men­tion of that con­tro­ver­sial pro­vi­sion while pre­sent­ing the bill.

"You didn't tell the Par­lia­ment that you are now go­ing to fin­ger­print every sin­gle vis­i­tor to T&T," Im­bert told Ram­lo­gan.He al­so said Ram­lo­gan did not out­line the pol­i­cy be­hind the mea­sure to fin­ger­print vis­i­tors from Asia, Eu­rope, South Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean and the leg­is­la­tion made no dis­tinc­tion be­tween a crim­i­nal and a law-abid­ing vis­i­tor.The Diego Mar­tin North East MP said it was im­por­tant to make a dis­tinc­tion in the leg­is­la­tion, since a cit­i­zen can be de­port­ed for sev­er­al rea­sons and not on­ly crime.

"There are all sorts of rea­sons why peo­ple get de­port­ed and they are not crim­i­nal of­fences," Im­bert said."You want to fin­ger­print every­body from Bar­ba­dos, St Lu­cia, St Vin­cent, Grena­da, Guyana, Suri­name, An­tigua. You want to in­sist that Cari­com cit­i­zens be fin­ger­print­ed on ar­rival at Pi­ar­co, but not Trinida­di­ans," Im­bert told leg­is­la­tors.He said the Re­vised Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas would be breached if the bill went ahead, as all Cari­com na­tion­als are guar­an­teed equal treat­ment un­der the said treaty.

In­sist­ing that on­ly crim­i­nal of­fend­ers should be fin­ger­print­ed and not law-abid­ing cit­i­zens, Im­bert sug­gest­ed that the leg­is­la­tion should be amend­ed to ex­empt na­tion­als from coun­tries with which T&T has a treaty and rec­i­p­ro­cal agree­ments.

Im­bert ques­tioned whether the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty would agree for their cit­i­zens to be fin­ger­print­ed on ar­rival in T&T, say­ing that will nev­er hap­pen. He sug­gest­ed that the leg­is­la­tion be de­layed to al­low for con­sid­er­a­tion of all its pro­vi­sions, and in­sist­ed that if this was not done the leg­is­la­tion would be test­ed in the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice.

He sug­gest­ed the visa reci­procity agree­ment with the EU will al­so not hap­pen if the law was passed. Im­bert said the Gov­ern­ment was "just bull-head­ed," adding if the mea­sure was ap­proved mil­lions of vis­i­tors would have to be fin­ger­print­ed and there was in­ad­e­quate in­fra­struc­ture for it to be done ef­fi­cient­ly.The bill re­quires a spe­cial three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty vote to be passed.


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