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.”