Online arrival forms coming in weeks, says Alexander

BRENT PIN­HEIRO

Pro­duc­er

The days of trav­ellers fill­ing out pa­per im­mi­gra­tion forms be­fore ar­riv­ing in T&T will soon end, as the Gov­ern­ment pre­pares to in­tro­duce an on­line sys­tem.

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der said au­thor­i­ties are test­ing new sys­tems and “[the new] sys­tem will be in­tro­duced in its en­tire­ty in the com­ing weeks”. He did not pro­vide an ex­act start date for the roll­out. Alexan­der spoke at a me­dia con­fer­ence on Fri­day at Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah.

On­line ar­rival forms, al­so known as dis­em­barka­tion forms, al­low trav­ellers to sub­mit flight da­ta and pass­port and bi­o­graph­i­cal de­tails up to 72 hours in ad­vance to im­mi­gra­tion au­thor­i­ties for faster pro­cess­ing.

In 2019, then Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert pro­posed re­mov­ing ar­rival forms at the coun­try’s two in­ter­na­tion­al air­ports dur­ing his 2020 Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion. He said, “In an ef­fort to keep up with in­ter­na­tion­al best prac­tice and the ever-chang­ing world of tech­nol­o­gy, I pro­pose to elim­i­nate ar­rival forms at our air­ports. The new sys­tem will re­ly on ad­vanced pas­sen­ger in­for­ma­tion us­ing ma­chine-read­able pass­ports and oth­er ap­pro­pri­ate tech­nol­o­gy. This new pol­i­cy will take ef­fect in 2020”.

Months lat­er, the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic hit the coun­try and T&T’s bor­ders closed.

In 2024, dur­ing an­oth­er Bud­get speech, Im­bert again promised to in­tro­duce a “dig­i­tal on­line dis­em­barka­tion and em­barka­tion card”. He said a le­gal team would be­gin work­ing on the frame­work for the forms in 2025. That team would as­sess re­quire­ments, re­view sim­i­lar sys­tems in oth­er coun­tries and iden­ti­fy any nec­es­sary leg­isla­tive changes. The PNM lost the gen­er­al elec­tion be­fore it could take up­dat­ed leg­is­la­tion to Par­lia­ment.

On­line em­barka­tion and dis­em­barka­tion forms have gained pop­u­lar­i­ty across the Caribbean as gov­ern­ments seek to se­cure their bor­ders while mak­ing trav­el more seam­less for pas­sen­gers. Coun­tries in­clud­ing Bar­ba­dos, Saint Lu­cia, Do­mini­ca and Guyana now use on­line forms.