JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Tuesday, March 18, 2025

Government meets with US Embassy on visa help for T&T cultural workers

by

Guardian Media
1369 days ago
20210618

The Gov­ern­ment has met with the Unit­ed States’ Em­bassy in Port-of-Spain, seek­ing to en­hance the ef­forts of cul­tur­al work­ers who need visas to trav­el to the Unit­ed States for rev­enue-earn­ing per­for­mances af­ter be­ing neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed by COVID-19 re­stric­tions here.

This fol­lows a meet­ing in­volv­ing Min­is­ter of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts Ran­dall Mitchell and Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Dr Amery Browne, Chargé d’Af­faires of the Unit­ed States Em­bassy in Trinidad and To­ba­go Shante Moore and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Pro­mot­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion on Wednes­day.

A state­ment by the Min­istry of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts said yes­ter­day that it con­tin­ues to ad­vo­cate on be­half of artistes and pro­mot­ers to smoothen the process of ap­pli­ca­tion for work visas and ad­dress any chal­lenges re­lat­ed to their abil­i­ty to trav­el abroad for work re­lat­ed to the pro­mo­tion of T&T’s cul­ture in the Unit­ed States.

As it cur­rent­ly stands, cul­tur­al work­ers who rep­re­sent Trinidad and To­ba­go at var­i­ous events and fes­ti­vals must ap­ply for a spe­cial visa that gives them the abil­i­ty to law­ful­ly work tem­porar­i­ly with­in the Unit­ed States.

One of the main chal­lenges faced by the cul­tur­al sec­tor is the clo­sure of the Unit­ed States Em­bassy in Trinidad and To­ba­go due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, which ef­fec­tive­ly ceased in-per­son in­ter­views at the em­bassy.

The state­ment said, “Moore un­der­scored his gov­ern­ment’s sup­port for Trinidad and To­ba­go’s cul­tur­al sec­tor and gave the un­der­tak­ing that is­sues raised by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Pro­mot­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion through the Min­istry of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts will be re­viewed by the Con­sular Sec­tion of the Unit­ed States Em­bassy.”

The state­ment al­so quot­ed Mitchell as say­ing, “This meet­ing was ab­solute­ly nec­es­sary as the min­istry seeks to ame­lio­rate any bar­ri­ers to earn­ing in­come abroad, as the sec­tor seeks to re­cov­er from the im­pact of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. Both the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment and the Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs are key stake­hold­ers in this process and all par­ties are on board with en­sur­ing that the cre­ative sec­tor re­turns to some sense of nor­mal­cy.”

The min­istry’s state­ment added that the meet­ing fol­lows on the heels of a re­cent­ly im­ple­ment­ed pro­gramme that fa­cil­i­tates the ease of vac­ci­na­tions and re­turn trav­el ex­emp­tions for cul­tur­al work­ers, to as­sist mem­bers of the sec­tor in ac­cept­ing book­ings and en­gage­ments in­ter­na­tion­al­ly at fes­ti­vals and events.

“Min­is­ters Mitchell and Browne and the Chargé d’Af­faires joint­ly ex­pressed their com­mit­ment to the cul­tur­al sec­tor and pledged to con­tin­ue work­ing to­geth­er to en­sure the sec­tor’s sur­vival,” the state­ment said.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored