DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne has urged the Unit­ed King­dom to ad­dress the short­com­ings in its asy­lum pro­gramme, which he be­lieves are the un­der­ly­ing cause of the so-called in­flux of Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­als.

Browne made the com­ment dur­ing a walk­a­bout in the Tu­na­puna con­stituen­cy with Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young and MP Es­mond Forde yes­ter­day.

Ac­cord­ing to Browne, who had pre­vi­ous­ly con­demned the “dis­pro­por­tion­ate” visa re­quire­ments im­posed on T&T na­tion­als, the UK should not pe­nalise small­er na­tions for its own sys­temic is­sues.

“If there’s an enor­mous loop­hole, you take steps to close that loop­hole,” Browne said.

While Browne did not have spe­cif­ic de­tails on how much it costs the UK gov­ern­ment to as­sist a T&T asy­lum seek­er, he not­ed that the as­so­ci­at­ed fees could be sub­stan­tial.

“It re­al­ly is a bizarre sys­tem, where once you ap­ply for asy­lum, the gov­ern­ment there cov­ers all your liv­ing ex­pens­es—your ac­com­mo­da­tion, your meals, every­thing else. Some are housed in ho­tels, and they have meth­ods to stretch out the process for years. So, it’s a mas­sive loop­hole, and while I don’t con­done the abuse, the an­swer is to close those loop­holes,” Browne ex­plained.

He ac­knowl­edged that the de­ci­sion was a sov­er­eign one for the UK, but point­ed out that they were com­mit­ted to re­view­ing it.

“We would want this de­ci­sion to be re­versed as soon as pos­si­ble. In the mean­time, we’ve asked for some flex­i­bil­i­ty in terms of the tran­si­tion pe­ri­od, specif­i­cal­ly re­gard­ing the avail­abil­i­ty of the (Elec­tron­ic Trav­el Au­tho­ri­sa­tion) ETA and oth­er mea­sures that can bring re­lief to our na­tion­als,” he said.

Browne said Gov­ern­ment was al­so close­ly mon­i­tor­ing the in­tense po­lit­i­cal de­bate in Lon­don, which spans is­sues such as im­mi­gra­tion, asy­lum, and repa­ra­tions—mat­ters that di­rect­ly af­fect T&T.

When asked about Prime Min­is­ter Young’s re­cent rev­e­la­tion that Gov­ern­ment had plans to take steps to ad­dress some of the con­cerns raised by the UK re­gard­ing T&T’s role in the asy­lum is­sue, Browne de­clined to dis­close the specifics of these plans.

Browne not­ed that both in­no­cent and guilty in­di­vid­u­als would now face greater dif­fi­cul­ties when at­tempt­ing to trav­el to Lon­don.

“It’s now much more dif­fi­cult for every­one. The sad truth is that in­no­cent, or­di­nary peo­ple are be­ing forced to pay a high price for the ac­tions of a very small mi­nor­i­ty. We’ve made that case to the British, and we’ll con­tin­ue to do so,” he said, though he could not pro­vide spe­cif­ic sta­tis­tics at the time.

Browne fur­ther de­fend­ed him­self and the Gov­ern­ment against crit­ics who blamed them for the UK’s de­ci­sion.

"There are a few peo­ple in this coun­try who feel that when a large coun­try makes a neg­a­tive de­ci­sion against us, some­how we de­served it, or the gov­ern­ment didn’t do some­thing,” he said.

“That’s a very sad men­tal­i­ty. Some­times, coun­tries sim­ply make the wrong de­ci­sion in cer­tain cir­cum­stances, and this is a clear case of that."

He re­it­er­at­ed his dis­ap­proval of the visa im­po­si­tion, stat­ing that it had dis­rupt­ed var­i­ous forms of move­ment, in­clud­ing fam­i­ly con­nec­tions, med­ical needs, ed­u­ca­tion, and even peo­ple in tran­sit to oth­er des­ti­na­tions, such as In­dia, for pil­grim­ages.

The UK an­nounced its de­ci­sion on March 12, re­quir­ing na­tion­als from T&T to ob­tain a visa for even short vis­its. On March 13, a re­quire­ment for tran­sit visas was al­so in­tro­duced. The fees for the new visa sys­tem vary de­pend­ing on the length of stay, rang­ing from £115 (TT$1,013.46) for six months to £1,000 (TT$8,812.68) for a ten-year visa.