US visa ban shocks Antigua, Dominica PMs

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Re­porter

An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Prime Min­is­ter Gas­ton Browne and Do­mini­ca Prime Min­is­ter Roo­sevelt Sker­rit have reached out to the Unit­ed States to clar­i­fy its up­com­ing visa ban an­nounced on na­tion­als of their re­spec­tive coun­tries, and to have this re­moved.

Each leader be­lieves the re­stric­tion stemmed from an “er­ror” and “mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion.”

Browne and Sker­rit gave sep­a­rate state­ments yes­ter­day, af­ter the US on Tues­day ex­pand­ed a par­tial trav­el ban that will ap­ply to 15 new coun­tries from Jan­u­ary 1, 2026.

Among them are An­tigua and Bar­bu­da and Do­mini­ca, which have Cit­i­zen­ship-by-In­vest­ment pro­grammes, al­low­ing for­eign­ers a pass­port in ex­change for fi­nan­cial in­vest­ments. The US trav­el re­stric­tion is based on its con­cern that those coun­tries have of­fered CBI pro­gramme mi­nus res­i­den­cy.

Yes­ter­day, Browne told Guardian Me­dia that his coun­try is “... sol­dier­ing on op­ti­misti­cal­ly with re­solve and re­silience.”

Browne added: “We’re deeply dis­ap­point­ed that An­tigua and Bar­bu­da has been in­clud­ed in this procla­ma­tion on the stat­ed ground that our CBI pro­gramme has his­tor­i­cal­ly op­er­at­ed with­out a res­i­den­cy re­quire­ment. That as­ser­tion does not re­flect the present re­al­i­ty of our laws.”

Browne said over the past year, his coun­try has worked close­ly and con­struc­tive­ly with sev­er­al US gov­ern­ment de­part­ments to strength­en safe­guards with­in the pro­gramme.

“We’ve en­gaged in good faith, ac­cept­ed prac­ti­cal sug­ges­tions, and tak­en con­crete steps to en­sure our pro­gramme presents no risk what­so­ev­er to the se­cu­ri­ty of the Unit­ed States.”

As part of this process, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da re­cent­ly en­act­ed com­pre­hen­sive new leg­is­la­tion strength­en­ing every as­pect of the CBI pro­gramme, in­clud­ing due dili­gence, trans­paren­cy, in­for­ma­tion-shar­ing and en­force­ment.

“Im­por­tant­ly, this leg­is­la­tion in­tro­duces a manda­to­ry 30-day phys­i­cal res­i­den­cy re­quire­ment in An­tigua and Bar­bu­da as a strict con­di­tion for qual­i­fi­ca­tion for cit­i­zen­ship. It is there­fore an er­ror to state that our pro­gramme op­er­ates with­out a res­i­den­cy re­quire­ment,” Browne added.

He said im­me­di­ate­ly up­on the is­suance of the US procla­ma­tion, his coun­try’s am­bas­sador to the Unit­ed States, Sir Ronald Sanders, con­tact­ed the US State De­part­ment.

“He was in­formed that State De­part­ment of­fi­cials were them­selves sur­prised by the procla­ma­tion and had re­ceived no pri­or no­tice of its is­suance. Am­bas­sador Sanders has since ini­ti­at­ed arrange­ments for ur­gent, high-lev­el en­gage­ment with the State De­part­ment and the White House to clar­i­fy the mat­ter, to present the full and ac­cu­rate facts, and to be­gin the process of re­solv­ing this is­sue with a view to restor­ing nor­mal visa ac­cess for cit­i­zens of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da,” Browne said.

Browne said he’s al­so writ­ing di­rect­ly to US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump and US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio, of­fer­ing his gov­ern­ment’s full en­gage­ment and co­op­er­a­tion to ad­dress any con­cerns “and take all rea­son­able steps nec­es­sary to al­low for the restora­tion of all visa cat­e­gories.”

Ac­cord­ing to a Do­mini­ca Broad­a­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion re­port, Do­mini­ca’s Prime Min­is­ter Sker­rit yes­ter­day said he be­lieved that “a case of mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion” be­tween the White House and oth­er arms of its gov­ern­ment could have caused the trav­el re­stric­tion on Do­mini­cans.

Sker­rit said his gov­ern­ment will work through the is­sue with the US gov­ern­ment, adding the US had been “most en­gag­ing and most sup­port­ive in re­spect to the re­view of the CBI.”

“So, we’ll con­tin­ue work­ing on this and will send for­mal notes to the US gov­ern­ment (Wednes­day) seek­ing clar­i­fi­ca­tion and urg­ing a re­view of the de­ci­sion. I think if the rea­son giv­en by the White House is that there’s no res­i­den­cy re­quire­ment, then that’s al­ready been ad­dressed with the sup­port of the US gov­ern­ment. So, it could very well be a sit­u­a­tion of mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion…but I don’t want to spec­u­late.”

Sker­rit said Do­mini­ca has had fruit­ful dis­cus­sions with the US on the pro­gramme, im­ple­ment­ing mea­sures agreed to dur­ing their dis­cus­sions and had been work­ing with the US gov­ern­ment on that mat­ter and oth­ers over the last eight months.

“So, this was re­al­ly a sur­prise to us com­ing from the White House. But I’m con­fi­dent if that is the rea­son, then we should be able to ad­dress it. If there are any oth­er rea­sons that they may have…I’m sure we can ne­go­ti­ate our­selves out of a chal­lenge.”

Sker­rit didn’t be­lieve the de­vel­op­ment would af­fect the on­go­ing re­la­tion­ship be­tween both coun­tries, not­ing his ad­min­is­tra­tion has en­joyed a clos­er work­ing re­la­tion­ship with the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion than the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Sker­rit said he was al­so in con­tact with An­tigua’s Browne on the mat­ter.