Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Cari­com and For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers says the Unit­ed King­dom’s de­ci­sion to im­pose visa re­quire­ments on T&T na­tion­als stems from a lack of po­lit­i­cal will by the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Speak­ing dur­ing yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at the Red House in Port-of-Spain, Sobers said the visa re­stric­tions fol­lowed the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment’s fail­ure to amend key leg­is­la­tion.

On March 12, UK High Com­mis­sion­er Jon Mark Dean an­nounced the new visa pol­i­cy, cit­ing a surge in asy­lum claims from T&T na­tion­als. The change, which took im­me­di­ate ef­fect, now re­quires all cit­i­zens to ob­tain a visa be­fore trav­el­ling to or tran­sit­ing through the UK, end­ing decades of visa-free ac­cess.

Asked for an up­date on the mat­ter, Sobers said the core is­sue was the ab­sence of leg­is­la­tion to no­ti­fy the UK in ad­vance of trav­ellers de­part­ing T&T for Britain.

“They (the for­mer gov­ern­ment) were told well in ad­vance of the March dead­line that they need­ed to ad­dress cer­tain is­sues. One of the things re­quest­ed was an amend­ment to a spe­cif­ic piece of leg­is­la­tion,” he said.

Sobers added that dis­cus­sions with the British High Com­mis­sion are on­go­ing, with an­oth­er vir­tu­al meet­ing sched­uled for next week. How­ev­er, he cau­tioned that pass­ing the nec­es­sary leg­is­la­tion would not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly lift the visa re­quire­ments.

In a What­sApp re­sponse to Guardian Me­dia, Sobers’ pre­de­ces­sor, Dr Amery Browne, crit­i­cised the min­is­ter’s re­marks and ques­tioned why the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion did not ad­dress the leg­isla­tive changes be­fore Par­lia­ment went in­to re­cess.

“The Min­is­ter once again is talk­ing out of his hat. If all that is re­quired is a sim­ple amend­ment, why did the UNC not bring it to Par­lia­ment be­fore the re­cess? They found time for mul­ti­ple mat­ters, in­clud­ing a Bill to change the Prime Min­is­ter’s pen­sion en­ti­tle­ments. Why wait un­til the re­cess to talk about this?” Browne said.

He added that the na­tion wants so­lu­tions, not ex­cus­es, point­ing out that the cur­rent gov­ern­ment has al­ready been in of­fice for two months.

Mean­while, Sobers al­so pro­vid­ed an up­date on dis­cus­sions held dur­ing the 49th Reg­u­lar Meet­ing of the Con­fer­ence of Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment in Mon­tego Bay, Ja­maica, re­gard­ing free move­ment with­in the re­gion.

He said the mat­ter is un­der care­ful re­view, de­scrib­ing it as an evo­lu­tion of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty Skilled Na­tion­als (Amend­ment) Bill, 2022, which fa­cil­i­tates the or­der­ly and law­ful move­ment of skilled work­ers across mem­ber states.

“This evo­lu­tion al­lows free move­ment with­out re­quir­ing the cer­tifi­cate cur­rent­ly pre­scribed by law,” Sobers ex­plained.

He not­ed that un­der the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion, the Min­istries of Health, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, and Ed­u­ca­tion sub­mit­ted re­ports on the po­ten­tial im­pact of free move­ment, which the cur­rent gov­ern­ment is now ex­am­in­ing.

“We are at an ad­vanced stage re­gard­ing full and free move­ment of per­sons, but we just want to pause a bit on cer­tain as­pects un­til Cab­i­net has a clear un­der­stand­ing of what this will look like,” he said.

Sobers added that the pro­pos­al might go out for pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion but de­clined to share de­tails of is­sues raised in the min­is­te­r­i­al re­ports. He said the Gov­ern­ment is not pre­pared to give a time­line for im­ple­men­ta­tion.

Dur­ing the Cari­com meet­ing, Cari­com Chair An­drew Hol­ness un­der­scored the im­por­tance of re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion and the di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the Caribbean Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my.

Four coun­tries—Bar­ba­dos, Be­lize, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, and Do­mini­ca—in­tend to im­ple­ment free move­ment of na­tion­als start­ing Oc­to­ber 1.