T&T spared as US suspends visa processing for 75 countries

DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­[email protected]

Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­als are ex­empt from the list of 75 coun­tries af­fect­ed by a Unit­ed States de­ci­sion to sus­pend the pro­cess­ing of cer­tain visas.

The re­stric­tion ap­plies on­ly to im­mi­grant visas, com­mon­ly re­ferred to as green cards, and does not af­fect tourist, busi­ness, stu­dent or oth­er non-im­mi­grant visa cat­e­gories.

The de­ci­sion was an­nounced by the US De­part­ment of State yes­ter­day and is sched­uled to take ef­fect on Jan­u­ary 21, with no end date an­nounced.

The pause fol­lows a de­ci­sion by the State De­part­ment last year to tight­en checks un­der the “pub­lic charge” pro­vi­sion of US im­mi­gra­tion law.

The move tar­get­ted ap­pli­cants that the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion viewed as po­ten­tial­ly de­pen­dent on state sup­port.

Dur­ing this up­com­ing sus­pen­sion, US au­thor­i­ties in­tend to re­view im­mi­gra­tion screen­ing process­es to lim­it the ad­mis­sion of for­eign na­tion­als ex­pect­ed to re­ly on wel­fare or oth­er pub­lic as­sis­tance.

Of the fif­teen Cari­com mem­ber states, twelve are af­fect­ed by the mea­sure. They in­clude An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, the Ba­hamas, Bar­ba­dos, Be­lize, Cu­ba, Do­mini­ca, Grena­da, Haiti, Ja­maica, St Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lu­cia and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines.

Re­act­ing to the an­nounce­ment, For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers said Trinidad and To­ba­go played no role in the de­ci­sion.

“The Gov­ern­ment of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go is nei­ther in­volved in, nor able to in­flu­ence the im­mi­gra­tion and visa poli­cies of the Gov­ern­ment of the Unit­ed States, which re­mains a sov­er­eign mat­ter,” Sobers said in a What­sApp re­sponse to Guardian Me­dia.

He added: “Trinidad and To­ba­go val­ues our long­stand­ing friend­ship and strong re­la­tions with the Unit­ed States and re­mains com­mit­ted to con­tin­ued co­op­er­a­tion and en­gage­ment in ar­eas of mu­tu­al in­ter­est for the ben­e­fit of both na­tions.”

State De­part­ment doc­u­men­ta­tion notes that rou­tine visa ser­vices were sus­pend­ed dur­ing the covid19 pan­dem­ic, dis­rupt­ing both im­mi­grant and non-im­mi­grant pro­cess­ing, with lim­it­ed ser­vices re­sum­ing from Ju­ly 2020. De­spite those dis­rup­tions, sev­en Cari­com coun­tries were list­ed as re­cip­i­ents of im­mi­grant visas in 2024, to­talling 51,168 peo­ple.

Trinidad and To­ba­go ac­count­ed for 1,292 of those visas.

The coun­tries in­clud­ed the Ba­hamas, Bar­ba­dos, Be­lize, Guyana, Haiti, Ja­maica, T&T and Cu­ba.

In­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions ex­perts Pro­fes­sor An­tho­ny Bryan and Dr An­tho­ny Gon­za­les both de­scribed the move as a sov­er­eign de­ci­sion by Wash­ing­ton.

Bryan said he does not be­lieve the af­fect­ed coun­tries are be­ing pun­ished for op­pos­ing US for­eign pol­i­cy.

“Any coun­try is free to im­pose what­ev­er re­stric­tions it wish­es for what­ev­er rea­son it wants. And that is en­tire­ly the case here. We are just caught in the drag­net, ap­par­ent­ly. So I don’t put any omi­nous rea­sons be­hind it. You know, it is what it is.”

Gon­za­les said he un­der­stood the ra­tio­nale be­hind the pol­i­cy.

“You know, a lot of peo­ple ap­ply for these things, and then they go up to the Unit­ed States, and they try to live off of a lot of pub­lic wel­fare. They try to get cash grants, or they may get free lunch at schools, or they may get, de­pend­ing, of course, on where they go to the US states, they could get cer­tain health ser­vices, ed­u­ca­tion ser­vices and so forth. So I think what they’re try­ing to do is to de­ter­mine where these peo­ple are, which coun­tries tend to send a lot of these peo­ple.”

“I’m not sure it is en­tire­ly based up­on pure for­eign pol­i­cy con­sid­er­a­tions. They would have had to look at—do their re­search.”

Mean­while, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da’s am­bas­sador to the Unit­ed States, Sir Ronald Sanders, ac­knowl­edged re­ports of his coun­try’s in­clu­sion on the list and said he has al­ready made rep­re­sen­ta­tions to Wash­ing­ton, de­spite the ab­sence of for­mal no­ti­fi­ca­tion.

“Up­on be­com­ing aware of these re­ports, I made im­me­di­ate in­quiries with the Unit­ed States De­part­ment of State. As of this mo­ment, no for­mal an­nounce­ment has been made, and no of­fi­cial com­mu­ni­ca­tion has been is­sued to the Em­bassies of the coun­tries re­port­ed­ly af­fect­ed.”

“In the mean­time, the Gov­ern­ment of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da con­tin­ues its rep­re­sen­ta­tions to the rel­e­vant Unit­ed States au­thor­i­ties to se­cure the re­moval of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da from the list of coun­tries sub­ject to par­tial visa re­stric­tions, in­clud­ing the re­quire­ment for cer­tain visa ap­pli­cants to post a bond. These ef­forts re­main on­go­ing and ac­tive.”

Sir Ronald said he was ad­vised by se­nior State De­part­ment of­fi­cials that the is­sue stems from a new re­quire­ment un­der di­rec­tion of the White House, stress­ing that his in­for­ma­tion came from di­rect con­ver­sa­tions rather than a for­mal writ­ten di­rec­tive. He al­so un­der­scored that gov­ern­ments have no le­gal role in in­di­vid­ual im­mi­gra­tion cas­es.

“It is al­so im­por­tant to clar­i­fy that ap­pli­ca­tions for im­mi­gra­tion to the Unit­ed States are mat­ters ex­clu­sive­ly be­tween the in­di­vid­ual ap­pli­cant and the Gov­ern­ment of the Unit­ed States. The coun­try of na­tion­al­i­ty or ori­gin of an ap­pli­cant has no le­gal or ad­min­is­tra­tive role in de­ci­sions re­lat­ing to the grant or re­fusal of im­mi­grant sta­tus.”

Guardian Me­dia sought com­ment from Cari­com chair and St Kitts and Nevis Prime Min­is­ter Dr Ter­rance Michael Drew, but ef­forts were un­suc­cess­ful.

At­tempts to con­tact Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so ob­tained no re­sponse.

US im­mi­grants visa is­sued:

2024

Trinidad and To­ba­go – 1,292

The Ba­hamas – 326

Bar­ba­dos – 1,494

Be­lize – 281

Guyana – 2,837

Haiti – 3,175

Ja­maica – 17,193

Cu­ba – 24,570

2023

Trinidad and To­ba­go – 1,309

The Ba­hamas – 381

Bar­ba­dos – 1,420

Be­lize – 268

Guyana – 14,170

Haiti – 10,071

Ja­maica – 11,824

Cu­ba – 28,143