Sobers: Govt working with UK to get visa requirement overturned

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Gov­ern­ment has been work­ing con­sis­tent­ly—up to a March meet­ing—to have the UK visa im­po­si­tion over­turned, says For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers.

And Sobers says it had cost the UK gov­ern­ment 65,000 pounds ster­ling to han­dle each claim by the floods of T&T asy­lum seek­ers over 2024—and this was among rea­sons for the visa im­po­si­tion.

Sobers dis­closed this while pi­lot­ing a bor­der se­cu­ri­ty bill in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day.

This pro­vides a frame­work for the col­lec­tion, trans­mis­sion, shar­ing, stor­age and reg­u­la­tion of Ad­vance Pas­sen­ger In­for­ma­tion and Pas­sen­ger Name Record con­cern­ing peo­ple en­ter­ing, de­part­ing and tran­sit­ing through T&T. It al­so op­er­a­tionalis­es the Cari­com Ad­vance Pas­sen­ger In­for­ma­tion Sys­tem.

In­for­ma­tion will be shared with in­ter­na­tion­al ju­ris­dic­tions, in­clud­ing In­ter­pol. The bill en­ables au­thor­i­ties to iden­ti­fy high-risk per­sons be­fore ar­rival/de­par­ture via the co­or­di­na­tion of in­tel­li­gence on in­di­vid­u­als in hu­man traf­fick­ing, nar­cotics smug­gling, or­gan­ised crime and ter­ror­ism.

The bill was passed with unan­i­mous Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion sup­port.

Ad­dress­ing queries about Gov­ern­ment’s ac­tions on the UK visa is­sue, Sobers not­ed the UK’s po­si­tion that its visa was in­tro­duced based on a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in T&T na­tion­als ap­ply­ing for asy­lum in the UK, with the first trend in No­vem­ber 2024.

Sobers cit­ed a Jan­u­ary 2025 meet­ing of Cari­com’s IM­PACS agency and the UK’s Home Of­fice and Na­tion­al Crime Agency, where UK au­thor­i­ties cit­ed the dra­mat­ic in­crease in T&T na­tion­als ap­ply­ing for asy­lum.

“...From an av­er­age of 15 to 20 peo­ple month­ly to 40 to 59 peo­ple in the last few months of 2024,”Sobers added.

“Con­cern was al­so ex­pressed re­gard­ing the en­try of gang mem­bers or in­di­vid­u­als with crim­i­nal back­grounds from T&T in­to the UK. The UK, there­fore, ad­vised of the like­ly im­po­si­tion of a visa regime in ear­ly 2025 if no ac­tion was tak­en by the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion.”

He said the UK had meet­ings with PNM min­is­ters in Jan­u­ary, Feb­ru­ary and March 2025 but the visa was im­ple­ment­ed. Sobers blamed this on Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s fail­ure to take the UK’s is­sues se­ri­ous­ly.

He said UK con­cerns in­clud­ed a spike in the num­ber of T&T asy­lum seek­ers from 240 to 350 an­nu­al­ly—with over 100 ap­ply­ing in De­cem­ber 2024 alone. Asy­lum claims seemed op­por­tunis­tic in na­ture and most weren’t le­git­i­mate and there­fore de­nied, he said.

“Na­tion­als were mak­ing asy­lum claims on ar­riv­ing at UK air­ports—rep­re­sent­ing a mis­use and abuse of UK im­mi­gra­tion sys­tems - with sig­nif­i­cant im­pact on Gatwick’s front­line op­er­a­tions,” he added.

Sobers said there was a high cost as­so­ci­at­ed with each asy­lum claim.

“... Whether ap­proved or de­nied, the UK gov­ern­ment was forced to spend an av­er­age of 65,000 UK pounds per claim! These were the is­sues they put to the last PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion!” he said.

“Once an up­ward trend in asy­lum claims was es­tab­lished and there were no ef­forts by the last ad­min­is­tra­tion to curb those claims, the UK had no choice but to im­ple­ment the visa.”

He said the UNC Gov­ern­ment, in May 2025, be­gan work­ing on the is­sue

The new Gov­ern­ment pro­posed to the UK, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of T&T na­tion­als with valid US visas be­ing ex­empt­ed from the UK visa re­quire­ment; and strength­en­ing/adopt­ing new screen­ing mea­sures for na­tion­als with con­vic­tions seek­ing to go to the UK.

A UK Home Of­fice team met Gov­ern­ment vir­tu­al­ly, he said and Cab­i­net, in Ju­ly 2025, man­dat­ed an in­ter-min­is­te­r­i­al team to deal with the is­sue.

Sobers said he met up to March this year with UK’s Min­is­ter in the Home Of­fice (Im­mi­gra­tion).

“So, the UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion’s been con­sis­tent­ly work­ing to have the visa im­po­si­tion over­turned,” Sobers added.

Speak­ing dur­ing the de­bate, Op­po­si­tion MP Kei­th Scot­land said it was true that in late 2024 there was an in­crease and ex­o­dus of al­leged gang mem­bers to the UK.

“It was the ac­tion of a PNM gov­ern­ment that forced the hands of these peo­ple that they couldn’t stay in T&T. ... we did sys­tem­at­ic plan­ning that drove them out, made it un­com­fort­able for them to live here,” Scot­land added, say­ing the PNM would sup­port the bill.