Brent Pin­heiro

Re­porter

brent.pin­heiro@guardian.co.tt

Ef­fec­tive Ju­ly 17, the Gov­ern­ment of Bermu­da now re­quires T&T pass­port hold­ers to have a valid Cana­di­an, UK or US visa to en­ter the coun­try. On Ju­ly 16, Bermu­da’s Min­istry of Econ­o­my and Labour re­voked the Bermu­da Im­mi­gra­tion and Pro­tec­tion (Pro­hi­bi­tion of En­try) Or­der 2025 and re­placed it with the Bermu­da Im­mi­gra­tion and Pro­tec­tion (Pro­hi­bi­tion of En­try) (No 2) Or­der 2025.

Un­der the new reg­u­la­tions, T&T na­tion­als can en­ter Bermu­da two ways:

• Pos­sess valid trav­el au­tho­ri­sa­tion to en­ter and re-en­ter Cana­da, the Unit­ed King­dom, or the Unit­ed States, with such au­tho­ri­sa­tion valid for at least 45 days from their in­tend­ed de­par­ture from Bermu­da; OR

• Pro­duce a cur­rent let­ter from the Gov­ern­ment con­firm­ing that they are a spouse of a Bermu­di­an or that they be­long to Bermu­da un­der sec­tion 11(5) of the Bermu­da Con­sti­tu­tion Or­der 1968.

The min­istry said the or­der “re­flects on­go­ing im­mi­gra­tion pol­i­cy re­views and ad­just­ments”. It came in­to ef­fect on Ju­ly 17.

Bermu­da is a British Over­seas Ter­ri­to­ry with a self-gov­ern­ing par­lia­men­tary democ­ra­cy and a bi­cam­er­al par­lia­ment lo­cat­ed in the cap­i­tal Hamil­ton. The pre­mier is the head of gov­ern­ment and is for­mal­ly ap­point­ed by the gov­er­nor, who is nom­i­nat­ed by the British gov­ern­ment as the rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the King.

On March 12 the Unit­ed King­dom an­nounced it was mak­ing changes to its visa pol­i­cy—re­quir­ing with im­me­di­ate ef­fect, that all T&T na­tion­als ob­tain a visa be­fore trav­el­ling. Ire­land im­ple­ment­ed a sim­i­lar pol­i­cy on May 9. Min­is­ter of State for Mi­gra­tion Colm Bro­phy at the time stat­ing the de­ci­sion was made to “bring Ire­land in­to clos­er align­ment with the Unit­ed King­dom”.

For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers was ex­pect­ed to meet with UK of­fi­cials yes­ter­day to dis­cuss the visa pol­i­cy. Guardian Me­dia reached out to Sobers for an up­date, and we await his re­sponse.

At last week Thurs­day’s post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence, Sobers said the main rea­son for the UK im­pos­ing the visa re­quire­ment on T&T pass­port hold­ers was the ab­sence of leg­is­la­tion to no­ti­fy UK au­thor­i­ties in ad­vance of trav­ellers de­part­ing this coun­try for Britain.

“They (the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion) were told well in ad­vance of the March dead­line that they need­ed to ad­dress cer­tain is­sues. One of the things re­quest­ed was an amend­ment to a spe­cif­ic piece of leg­is­la­tion.”