Raphael John-Lall

T&T Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters should use the of­fi­cial means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion that are avail­able to them if they want to com­mu­ni­cate their views to the US Em­bassy.

Pub­lic Af­fairs Of­fi­cer at the em­bassy, Matthew Cas­set­ta, told the Guardian that yes­ter­day in a tele­phone in­ter­view in which he was com­ment­ing on me­dia re­ports that re­layed what Sports Min­is­ter Anil Roberts had said con­cern­ing US visa ap­pli­ca­tions. Ac­cord­ing to me­dia re­ports yes­ter­day, Roberts said on Sun­day the US Em­bassy need­ed to have a clear pol­i­cy on visas and men­tioned the names of two ath­letes who were de­nied visas to study in the US. Com­ment­ing on this, Cas­set­ta said there were av­enues for T&T Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ters to voice their con­cerns to the em­bassy.

"Any Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter would be wel­comed to ex­press their views, but this should be done through the of­fi­cial chan­nels, like the diplo­mat­ic notes that are ex­changed be­tween the em­bassy and the min­istries," he said. He al­so men­tioned the three-day vis­it of US As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary of State for the West­ern Hemi­sphere, Dr Ar­turo Valen­zuela, to Trinidad last week where sim­i­lar is­sues were raised at a me­dia con­fer­ence last week at the Hy­att Ho­tel. Beat­rice Wel­ters, US Am­bas­sador to T&T, al­so was present at the me­dia con­fer­ence.

At the news con­fer­ence, Valen­zuela said 70 per cent of the 36,000 visa ap­pli­ca­tions that the em­bassy re­ceived on an an­nu­al ba­sis were ap­proved and that the chances of T&T na­tion­als get­ting visas were bet­ter than oth­er Caribbean ter­ri­to­ries. "The rate of ap­proval to get a visa in T&T is much bet­ter than oth­er coun­tries like Guyana or Ja­maica. Sev­en­ty per cent of lo­cals who ap­ply for visas are suc­cess­ful," Cas­set­ta said. He point­ed out that al­though some lo­cals com­plain about ser­vices at the em­bassy, both Wel­ters and Valen­zuela con­grat­u­lat­ed con­sular staff at the em­bassy for their good work.

He added: "At the me­dia con­fer­ence the US am­bas­sador and our As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary of State both af­firmed their con­fi­dence in the con­sular sec­tion at our em­bassy in Trinidad. "Am­bas­sador Wel­ters said she had per­son­al­ly wit­nessed in­ter­views be­ing car­ried out and they were all car­ried out to the let­ter while Valen­zuela was pleased to see the ded­i­cat­ed staff at the con­sular sec­tion and em­bassy." Cas­set­ta al­so de­clined to com­ment on a Guardian re­port yes­ter­day which in­di­cat­ed that a 14-year-old T&T na­tion­al was de­tained by the US Cus­toms and Bor­der Pro­tec­tion (CBP) agency and is present­ly in its cus­tody.

The Guardian re­port stat­ed that im­mi­gra­tion at­tor­ney Randy De­poo said the girl's moth­er is "se­vere­ly trau­ma­tised" and that the For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter, Dr Su­ruj Ram­bachan, was fol­low­ing the case close­ly. "The US Em­bassy usu­al­ly does not com­ment on an on­go­ing le­gal case so I can't com­ment on this spe­cif­ic case at this time," Cas­set­ta said.