The US Con­sulate in T&T says the sus­pen­sion in new ap­pli­ca­tions for US stu­dent visas (F-1, M1 and J-1) for T&T na­tion­als is a “short op­er­a­tional pause and does not sig­ni­fy a change in US stu­dent visa pol­i­cy” to­wards this coun­try.

This is ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs.

In a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, the min­istry said it has been in di­rect com­mu­ni­ca­tion with its US coun­ter­parts on the mat­ter lo­cal­ly.

The state­ment said, “It is im­por­tant to note that US stu­dent visa ap­point­ment dates are typ­i­cal­ly gen­er­at­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly one month in ad­vance. There­fore, all stu­dents who have al­ready se­cured and re­ceived con­fir­ma­tion for their visa in­ter­view ap­point­ments will have their ap­point­ments ho­n­oured as sched­uled. The cur­rent pause specif­i­cal­ly per­tains to the sub­mis­sion of new stu­dent visa ap­pli­ca­tions.”

The min­istry said it un­der­stands the con­cerns and anx­i­ety that this may raise among stu­dents and their fam­i­lies. How­ev­er, the min­istry said it re­mains hope­ful and an­tic­i­pates a swift res­o­lu­tion, with a re­turn to nor­mal pro­cess­ing of new stu­dent visa ap­pli­ca­tions once the on­go­ing in­ter­nal re­view by the US au­thor­i­ties is com­plete.

Last week, the Don­ald Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion an­nounced the abrupt sus­pen­sion of ap­pli­ca­tions for for­eign stu­dent visas, send­ing lo­cal stu­dents who may be seek­ing to ac­quire visas in the Unit­ed States in­to a tail­spin.

A di­rec­tive, signed by US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio and sent to all US diplo­mat­ic and con­sular posts abroad stat­ed, “Ef­fec­tive im­me­di­ate­ly, in prepa­ra­tion for an ex­pan­sion of re­quired so­cial me­dia screen­ing and vet­ting, con­sular sec­tions should not 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.”

In re­sponse to the an­nounce­ment Trinidad Youth Coun­cil (TYC) pres­i­dent Shane John said the sit­u­a­tion now puts the onus on the Gov­ern­ment to re­turn the Gov­ern­ment As­sis­tance for Tu­ition Ex­pens­es (GATE) pro­gramme 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 then.

Last Thurs­day at the post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said that her Gov­ern­ment was mon­i­tor­ing the US pol­i­cy but was not im­me­di­ate­ly con­sid­er­ing ex­pand­ing the GATE pro­gramme.