The gov­ern­ment has reached out to Unit­ed States of­fi­cials for clar­i­fi­ca­tion fol­low­ing re­ports that the twin-is­land fed­er­a­tion has been in­clud­ed in a list of na­tions fac­ing po­ten­tial trav­el re­stric­tions.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr. Ter­rance Drew con­firmed in a state­ment that his ad­min­is­tra­tion, along with the coun­try’s Em­bassy in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., has en­gaged with US au­thor­i­ties af­ter a New York Times re­port in­di­cat­ed that St. Kitts and Nevis would be placed in a “yel­low” cat­e­go­ry of na­tions that would have 60 days to ad­dress per­ceived de­fi­cien­cies or risk trav­el re­stric­tions.

“The gov­ern­ment is not aware of any such con­cerns raised by US coun­ter­parts,” the state­ment said, adding that the gov­ern­ment has al­so not re­ceived any com­mu­ni­ca­tion on this mat­ter, ei­ther for­mal or in­for­mal, from US au­thor­i­ties.

The New York Times re­port­ed that the draft list de­tail­ing three tiers of coun­tries whose cit­i­zens may face re­stric­tions on en­ter­ing the US, in­clud­ed a “red” list of 11 na­tions whose cit­i­zens would be flat­ly barred from en­ter­ing the US, and an “or­ange” list of 10 coun­tries for which trav­el would be re­strict­ed but not cut off. Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, of­fi­cials, who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, said the State De­part­ment had de­vel­oped the list sev­er­al weeks ago and that changes were like­ly by the time it reached the White House.

Saint Lu­cia, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, and Do­mini­ca are al­so on the “yel­low” list of 22 na­tions, and while no rea­son was giv­en for the place­ment of coun­tries in that cat­e­go­ry, the New York Times not­ed that the is­sues could in­clude in­ad­e­quate se­cu­ri­ty prac­tices for is­su­ing pass­ports, in­suf­fi­cient in­for­ma­tion-shar­ing on trav­ellers, or the sell­ing of cit­i­zen­ship to peo­ple from banned coun­tries. All the Caribbean is­lands on the list have Cit­i­zen­ship by In­vest­ment (CBI) pro­grammes.

In its state­ment, the St. Kitts and Nevis gov­ern­ment stressed that since Au­gust 2022, it has main­tained open di­a­logue with the US gov­ern­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly re­gard­ing re­forms to its CBI pro­gramme. In Jan­u­ary, Prime Min­is­ter Drew par­tic­i­pat­ed in a three-day mul­ti­lat­er­al meet­ing in the Unit­ed King­dom with se­nior of­fi­cials from the US State De­part­ment and Trea­sury.

“This en­gage­ment, along with on­go­ing dis­cus­sions, un­der­scores the fed­er­a­tion’s com­mit­ment to in­ter­na­tion­al co­op­er­a­tion and ad­her­ence to glob­al best prac­tices in the CBI sec­tor,” the gov­ern­ment said.

It added that a con­sul­tant has be­gun the process of draft­ing a sub-re­gion­al reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work for CBI pro­grammes across the five Or­gan­i­sa­tion of East­ern Caribbean States ter­ri­to­ries that op­er­ate such ini­tia­tives.

“The con­sul­tant and the in­ter­im reg­u­la­to­ry com­mit­tee re­cent­ly met with Prime Min­is­ter Drew and oth­er of­fi­cials from St. Kitts and Nevis to ad­vance this process,” the gov­ern­ment dis­closed.

The gov­ern­ment as­sured the pub­lic that it re­mains ded­i­cat­ed to trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty and will pro­vide up­dates should any of­fi­cial com­mu­ni­ca­tion from the US be re­ceived.

Prime Min­is­ter Drew re­it­er­at­ed St Kitts and Nevis’ diplo­mat­ic stance, af­firm­ing that “the Unit­ed States has been an in­valu­able de­vel­op­ment part­ner, and we are grate­ful for their con­tri­bu­tions to our Fed­er­a­tion over the years. We are com­mit­ted to strength­en­ing our re­la­tion­ship.”

The An­tigua and Bar­bu­da gov­ern­ment has al­so con­tact­ed the US gov­ern­ment seek­ing clar­i­fi­ca­tion about the re­port­ed po­ten­tial trav­el re­stric­tions. In a diplo­mat­ic note sent to the US State De­part­ment on Sat­ur­day, the An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Em­bassy in the US ex­pressed deep con­cern about the re­ports.