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Tuesday, July 15, 2025

St. Kitts-Nevis says it is actively engaging partners amid US travel ban

by

26 days ago
20250618

The St. Kitts-Nevis gov­ern­ment says it has re­ceived no of­fi­cial com­mu­ni­ca­tion from the Unit­ed States re­gard­ing a trav­el ban on the twin-is­land Fed­er­a­tion amid in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia re­ports that the Don­ald Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion is re­view­ing po­ten­tial visa bans or oth­er re­stric­tions for na­tion­als of 36 coun­tries, in­clud­ing four in the Caribbean.

In a state­ment, Bas­seterre said it has tak­en note of re­ports now cir­cu­lat­ing on var­i­ous plat­forms sug­gest­ing that Wash­ing­ton “has im­posed or is prepar­ing to im­pose” a trav­el ban that in­cludes the twin-is­land Fed­er­a­tion, “and which may af­fect the abil­i­ty of our cit­i­zens to en­ter the Unit­ed States.

“While we un­der­stand the con­cerns that such re­ports may nat­u­ral­ly gen­er­ate, the Gov­ern­ment of St. Kitts and Nevis wish­es to make it ab­solute­ly clear that no of­fi­cial cor­re­spon­dence or com­mu­ni­ca­tion has been re­ceived from the Unit­ed States Gov­ern­ment, whether through our Em­bassy, Con­sular rep­re­sen­ta­tives, or any oth­er chan­nel, in­di­cat­ing the ex­is­tence or im­pend­ing is­suance of any such trav­el ban or re­stric­tion that tar­gets St. Kitts and Nevis or the cit­i­zens of St. Kitts and Nevis.”

The gov­ern­ment said that it takes “any and all in­di­ca­tions of po­ten­tial threats to the rights and mo­bil­i­ty of our cit­i­zens se­ri­ous­ly”  and that al­though no for­mal no­tice has been is­sued or re­ceived, “the mere cir­cu­la­tion of such a re­port is con­cern­ing enough."

“As such, the Gov­ern­ment is ac­tive­ly en­gag­ing its diplo­mat­ic and in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners to de­ter­mine the source, cred­i­bil­i­ty, and ve­rac­i­ty of the claims now in cir­cu­la­tion. The pro­tec­tion of our cit­i­zens, at home and abroad, is a top pri­or­i­ty. We are com­mit­ted to main­tain­ing strong and re­spect­ful re­la­tions with the Unit­ed States and all our in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners.

“We urge all to re­ly on of­fi­cial gov­ern­ment chan­nels for ac­cu­rate and time­ly in­for­ma­tion,”  it said.

Over the last week­end, the Wash­ing­ton Post news­pa­per re­port­ed that An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Do­mini­ca, St Kitts-Nevis, and St. Lu­cia were list­ed in a leaked State De­part­ment memo signed by Sec­re­tary of State, Mar­co Ru­bio, and cir­cu­lat­ed to US diplo­mat­ic mis­sions.

The four Caribbean coun­tries named in the memo have pre­vi­ous­ly de­fend­ed their cit­i­zen­ship by in­vest­ment (CBI) pro­grammes as le­git­i­mate tools for eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment, with safe­guards in­clud­ing rig­or­ous due dili­gence.

Un­der the CBI pro­gramme, for­eign in­vestors are grant­ed cit­i­zen­ship in re­turn for mak­ing a sub­stan­tial in­vest­ment in the so­cio-eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment of these coun­tries.

Ear­li­er this week, The An­tigua and Bar­bu­da gov­ern­ment de­fend­ed its CBI pro­gramme with For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter, E. P Chet Greene, say­ing St. John’s will be ‘fight­ing like hell’ to de­fend the CBI pro­gramme.

“They want to im­pose trav­el re­stric­tions on us; for what rea­son, God on­ly knows. We will not be bul­lied; our for­eign pol­i­cy is one of prin­ci­ple,” he said,  adding that the CBI pro­gramme brings much ben­e­fits to An­tigua and Bar­bu­da and that it is op­er­at­ed with in­tegri­ty.

St. Lu­cia’s Prime Min­is­ter Phillip J Pierre has al­so in­di­cat­ed that his coun­try has re­ceived no for­mal state­ment from Wash­ing­ton on the is­sue.

“ I want to make it ab­solute­ly clear that the gov­ern­ment of St.  Lu­cia has re­ceived no of­fi­cial cor­re­spon­dence on this mat­ter,” Pierre said in a state­ment on his Face­book page.

“As we act in the best in­ter­est of the peo­ple of St. Lu­cia, I re­as­sure you that we are in ac­tive dis­cus­sions with the U.S. Em­bassy in Bar­ba­dos, of­fi­cials from our Min­istry of Ex­ter­nal Af­fairs, and the Em­bassy of St. Lu­cia to the Unit­ed States in Wash­ing­ton, D.C.

“Once the nec­es­sary and ac­cu­rate in­for­ma­tion is con­veyed through of­fi­cial diplo­mat­ic chan­nels, the na­tion will be of­fi­cial­ly ad­dressed,” Pierre added.

Ac­cord­ing to the Wash­ing­ton Post, the memo gives the list­ed gov­ern­ments 60 days to meet new­ly de­fined bench­marks. Gov­ern­ments have been giv­en a dead­line of 8.00 am (lo­cal time) on Wednes­day to sub­mit an ini­tial ac­tion plan out­lin­ing how they in­tend to meet the re­quire­ments.

A key con­cern cit­ed in the memo is the sale of cit­i­zen­ship with­out a res­i­den­cy re­quire­ment. The memo al­so ref­er­enced oth­er is­sues, such as al­leged in­ci­dents of “an­ti-Amer­i­can ac­tiv­i­ty” in the US by na­tion­als of list­ed coun­tries.

How­ev­er, the memo al­so sug­gests that coun­tries will­ing to ac­cept third-coun­try na­tion­als re­moved from the US, or to en­ter a “safe third coun­try” agree­ment, could al­le­vi­ate some of Wash­ing­ton’s con­cerns.

In ad­di­tion to the Caribbean na­tions, the list in­cludes 25 African coun­tries and sev­er­al from Cen­tral Asia and the Pa­cif­ic.

BAS­SETERRE, St. Kitts, Jun 18, CMC –

CMC/lf/ir/2025

USInstagramRegionalSt. Kitts and NevisUS travel ban


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