Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Gov­ern­ment is mon­i­tor­ing the US pol­i­cy halt­ing for­eign stu­dent visas but is not im­me­di­ate­ly con­sid­er­ing ex­pand­ing the Gov­ern­ment As­sis­tance for Tu­ition Ex­pens­es (GATE) pro­gramme, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said yes­ter­day.

On Tues­day evening, the Don­ald Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion is­sued a di­rec­tive that af­fects the is­su­ing of stu­dent visas.

US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio in­struct­ed all US diplo­mat­ic and con­sular posts not to “add any ad­di­tion­al stu­dent or ex­change vis­i­tor (F, M, and J) visa ap­point­ment ca­pac­i­ty un­til fur­ther guid­ance is is­sued, which we an­tic­i­pate in the com­ing days.”

Yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said: “It is some­thing that our For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter is look­ing at. They are a sov­er­eign na­tion, and all sov­er­eign na­tions are en­ti­tled to put what­ev­er re­stric­tions they want to or not want but we will look in­to it.”

Com­ment­ing on the Trinidad Youth Coun­cil’s (TYC) call for a GATE ex­pan­sion, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said that would be dif­fi­cult.

TYC pres­i­dent Shane John had said that the sit­u­a­tion puts the onus on the Gov­ern­ment to re­turn GATE to its orig­i­nal for­mat.

“Dur­ing the cam­paign, you saw the (UNC) ad­min­is­tra­tion speak about the ex­pan­sion of GATE and re­turn­ing GATE to its usu­al glo­ry when it was first in­tro­duced by then- prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning.

“Ap­pli­ca­tions for uni­ver­si­ties are go­ing on now, so I would hope, and young per­sons would hope, that with­in this time pe­ri­od, be­fore the new aca­d­e­m­ic term in Sep­tem­ber starts, that there is that col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort and that con­sci­en­tious ef­fort to ex­pand it,” John said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said ed­u­ca­tion is close to the Gov­ern­ment and they want to help as far as re­sources will al­low.

This, she said, was in re­la­tion to a cam­paign promise to give each child en­ter­ing sec­ondary school a lap­top.

She said the past ad­min­is­tra­tion had left chil­dren “in the dump­ster” and she gave ex­am­ples of peo­ple who re­ceived lap­tops on en­ter­ing sec­ondary school and used them in­to uni­ver­si­ty.

“Do you know where we would have been to­day? Our chil­dren would have been tech­ni­cians out there,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.