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.

Saturday, March 15, 2025

UK hits T&T with visa requirements for entry

by

Kejan Haynes
3 days ago
20250312

The Unit­ed King­dom Gov­ern­ment has an­nounced that, with im­me­di­ate ef­fect, all na­tion­als of Trinidad and To­ba­go will now re­quire a visa to en­ter the UK, in­clud­ing for short vis­its. The de­ci­sion, made pub­lic on 12 March 2025, comes in re­sponse to what the UK Gov­ern­ment de­scribed as a “sig­nif­i­cant in­crease” in T&T na­tion­als ar­riv­ing as vis­i­tors and then claim­ing asy­lum.

Ac­cord­ing to an of­fi­cial re­lease from the UK Gov­ern­ment, the new visa re­quire­ment is in­tend­ed to ad­dress the mis­use of the Elec­tron­ic Trav­el Au­tho­ri­sa­tion (ETA) sys­tem and to pro­tect the in­tegri­ty of the UK’s im­mi­gra­tion process. “The UK’s re­la­tion­ship with Trinidad and To­ba­go re­mains a strong and friend­ly one,” the state­ment said, but added that the de­ci­sion “has not been tak­en light­ly.”

A re­quire­ment for tran­sit visas will al­so be in­tro­duced from 00:01 on 13 March. How­ev­er, a six-week tran­si­tion pe­ri­od has been im­ple­ment­ed. Trav­ellers who booked their trav­el and ob­tained an ETA be­fore the changes will be al­lowed to en­ter the UK with­out a visa un­til 15:00 BST on 23 April 2025. Those al­ready in the UK will not be af­fect­ed dur­ing the re­main­der of their stay but will need a visa for fu­ture vis­its.

British High Com­mis­sion­er to Trinidad and To­ba­go Jon Dean said the change aligns T&T with many oth­er visa-re­quired coun­tries with which the UK main­tains close ties. “We un­der­stand that trav­el is im­por­tant for fam­i­lies, busi­ness­es, and cul­tur­al con­nec­tions,” Dean said. “The in­tro­duc­tion of vis­i­tor visas is de­signed to sup­port safe and se­cure trav­el while en­sur­ing the UK’s bor­ders re­main pro­tect­ed.”

Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­als must now ap­ply for a visa on­line through the UK gov­ern­ment web­site and at­tend an in-per­son ap­point­ment at the Visa Ap­pli­ca­tion Cen­tre (VAC) in Port of Spain, which will now open five days a week to ac­com­mo­date de­mand. A stan­dard six-month mul­ti­ple-en­try visa costs £115, with longer-term op­tions avail­able. The UK Gov­ern­ment said it aims to process ap­pli­ca­tions with­in 15 work­ing days.

Min­is­ter of For­eign and CARI­COM Af­fairs Dr Amery Browne said the Trinidad and To­ba­go Gov­ern­ment had ex­pressed its dis­ap­point­ment and would con­tin­ue en­gag­ing with UK of­fi­cials. “This move is with­in their rights as a sov­er­eign na­tion,” Browne said, “but we do not see it as a pro­por­tion­ate re­sponse to what UK au­thor­i­ties con­veyed to us, which was their ob­ser­va­tion that a rel­a­tive­ly small num­ber of T&T na­tion­als were mis­us­ing the UK im­mi­gra­tion sys­tem by be­ing processed for an ETA in the nor­mal ex­ist­ing process and then sud­den­ly ap­ply­ing for asy­lum af­ter ar­rival.”

“We are not of the view that reg­u­lar trav­ellers to the UK should be neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ed by a rel­a­tive­ly small num­ber of per­sons who have been try­ing to abuse the British im­mi­gra­tion sys­tem,” he said.

Ac­cord­ing to The Times, asy­lum claims from T&T na­tion­als rose from an an­nu­al av­er­age of 49 be­tween 2015 and 2019 to 439 in the past year. A UK gov­ern­ment spokesper­son told the news­pa­per the new re­quire­ment ad­dress­es the grow­ing trend of peo­ple ar­riv­ing as tourists and then claim­ing asy­lum. The spokesper­son added that the UK “will con­tin­ue to warm­ly wel­come vis­i­tors” and that the visa re­quire­ment “will be kept un­der re­view.”

InstagramInternational UK VISA


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored