Prime Min­is­ter of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Gas­ton Browne said yes­ter­day that na­tion­als who al­ready hold Unit­ed States visas will con­tin­ue to have ac­cess to the U.S. and will not face visa re­vo­ca­tion, even as new visa arrange­ments are be­ing con­sid­ered for the re­gion.

In a Face­book post, Browne wrote:

“An­tiguans who have U.S. visas will con­tin­ue to en­joy ac­cess in­to the U.S. and there will be no re­vo­ca­tion of their visa. New visas may be sus­pend­ed for OECS coun­tries un­til bio­met­ric pass­port sys­tems are es­tab­lished to U.S. specs.”

The Prime Min­is­ter’s com­ments were lat­er re­in­forced by An­tigua and Bar­bu­da’s Am­bas­sador to the Unit­ed States and the Or­ga­ni­za­tion of Amer­i­can States (OAS), Sir Ronald Sanders, fol­low­ing high-lev­el dis­cus­sions in Wash­ing­ton.

In a state­ment, Sir Ronald said he met to­day with se­nior of­fi­cials of the Unit­ed States De­part­ment of State af­ter the is­suance of the U.S. Procla­ma­tion ti­tled “Re­strict­ing and Lim­it­ing the En­try of For­eign Na­tion­als to Pro­tect the Se­cu­ri­ty of the Unit­ed States”, which was is­sued on De­cem­ber 16, 2025.

He said the meet­ing took place on the in­struc­tions of, and with guid­ance from, Prime Min­is­ter Browne and fo­cused on the im­pli­ca­tions of the procla­ma­tion for An­tigua and Bar­bu­da.

Sir Ronald said U.S. of­fi­cials con­firmed that all visas cur­rent­ly in ex­is­tence and valid­ly is­sued to hold­ers of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da pass­ports will con­tin­ue to be re­spect­ed and ac­cept­ed for en­try in­to the Unit­ed States.

This, he said, ap­plies to all visa cat­e­gories, in­clud­ing B-1, B-2, J and M visas, cov­er­ing tourist, busi­ness, stu­dent and oth­er valid U.S.-is­sued visas.

He al­so said there will be no re­vo­ca­tion of any visas is­sued to na­tion­als of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da be­fore De­cem­ber 31, 2025.

Ac­cord­ing to Sir Ronald, new visa ap­pli­ca­tions sub­mit­ted af­ter that date will be sub­ject to new arrange­ments that are still be­ing worked out with sev­er­al Caribbean coun­tries, in­clud­ing An­tigua and Bar­bu­da. He said these arrange­ments re­late to the col­lec­tion of bio­met­ric in­for­ma­tion to en­sure com­pat­i­bil­i­ty with U.S. bio­met­ric sys­tems.

Sir Ronald said the process of gath­er­ing bio­met­ric in­for­ma­tion will re­main un­changed for cit­i­zens of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, with on­ly the tech­nol­o­gy be­ing aligned to the U.S. sys­tem. He said the align­ment will ap­ply to all cit­i­zens, in­clud­ing those by birth, de­scent, nat­u­ral­i­sa­tion or in­vest­ment.

On be­half of the Gov­ern­ment and peo­ple of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Sir Ronald thanked U.S. of­fi­cials for their en­gage­ment and reaf­firmed his coun­try’s com­mit­ment to work­ing with U.S. au­thor­i­ties on se­cu­ri­ty re­quire­ments.

“We are pleased that clar­i­ty has been achieved on these im­me­di­ate con­cerns,” Sir Ronald said, “and we will con­tin­ue to par­tic­i­pate ful­ly in the work now un­der­way to en­sure the con­tin­u­a­tion of strong peo­ple-to-peo­ple ex­changes be­tween the Unit­ed States and An­tigua and Bar­bu­da.”