The surprise announcement that Henry Bernard Campbell, a political campaign adviser working with AKPD Message and Media, had been denied entry to Trinidad and Tobago at Piarco Airport, brought only brusque replies from the Minister of National Security when the media questioned him about the matter. "A release will come from the ministry," Minister Martin Joseph muttered, as television cameras and microphones converged on him. That release proved to be only slightly more informative than the National Security Minister's sharply-bitten comments. Just two sentences long and signed by the "Corporate Communications Unit," the release noted that neither Minister Joseph nor any Immigration Department officer had signed a deportation order, and that Campbell "was denied entry into Trinidad and Tobago in accordance with Section 8 (1) (q) of the Immigration Act, Chapter 18:01."
And this is where things get very curious. The surreal circumstances of Henry Bernard Campbell's second visit to Trinidad and Tobago on business related to the United National Congress campaign for government seem to have been triggered by a ruthlessly straight reading of a provision in the Immigration Act. Campbell's second visit may have run afoul of a stipulation in the rules that govern work permits that a person may only enter the country once a year without a work permit for the purposes of doing business. Section 8 (1) (q) relates specifically to persons who are deemed undesirable in the judgment of the Minister of National Security. Campbell's principals, AKPD Message and Media, have founded a successful practice built on a reputation for guiding political candidates to office, the most public example of which was the campaign of US President Barack Obama.
Past denials of entry into the country have tended to be reserved for situations of real threat to national stability, not the fear of public relations assaults on national security. During the preparations for the Summit of the Americas in 2009, lists of known agents provocateur likely to enter the country explicitly for the purposes of invoking public protest were drawn up and the most visible of these persons were, quite understandably, denied entry into the country. According to the Immigration Act, Immigration officers in charge of a port of entry are designated as special inquiry officers, with expanded powers of discretion. Such officers can decide on denials of entry, the implementation of deportation proceedings and may also exercise their judgment in allowing entry to individuals with written conditions.
There would seem to be no issue with such a special inquiry officer evaluating a situation like the one that Henry Bernard Campbell faced when he arrived on American Airlines Flight 1819, and choosing an entirely different solution; perhaps allowing the traveller entry on strict notice that they could not commence work until a proper work permit had been lodged with the Immigration Department. Such an action seems well within the powers given to special inquiry officers under the act, including the power to issue entry certificates "for a specified period and subject to such terms and conditions as may be mentioned therein." Special inquiry officers are also empowered under the act to "extend or limit the period of his stay, vary the conditions attached to his entry, or otherwise deal with him as if he were a person seeking entry into Trinidad and Tobago for the first time."
This certainly cannot be the first time that a person in an accepted and quite visible line of work has been faced with the strictures of local work permit regulations. It is certainly the first time that such a high- profile denial of entry has been lodged on the basis of a work permit issue in a PNM era which has set such store in the idea of foreign workers and consultants adding to the pool of knowledge available in Trinidad and Tobago. Against that backdrop and this country's long-standing enthusiasm for working with skilled workers from foreign nations, the abrupt denial of entry meted out to Henry Bernard Campbell is puzzling. The blunt, uninformative responses of the Minister of National Security only serve to expand the cloud of uncertainty around the matter.
It is simply not enough for the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Paula Gopee-Scoon to declare that the action was unrelated to the general election. Officials at the US Embassy, who were not consulted at all when the matter was active, noted that the circumstances were "not very clearly articulated." If, as the UNC's political leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar claims, the order to deny entry to Campbell came directly from the Minister of National Security, he owes the country a clearer accounting of the perceived threat that the PR man posed to Trinidad and Tobago, and the terrible fate from which we were all saved on Thursday night.