Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A strong bi­lat­er­al re­la­tion­ship with the Unit­ed States has been tout­ed as the main rea­son why this coun­try was not among five re­gion­al coun­tries that may be af­fect­ed by pur­port­ed US trav­el re­stric­tions.

The trav­el re­stric­tions, al­leged­ly pro­posed by US diplo­mat­ic and se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials, were re­vealed in a New York Times in­ves­tiga­tive re­port.

The re­port stat­ed that cit­i­zens from 11 coun­tries, in­clud­ing Cu­ba and Venezuela, would be flat­ly barred from en­ter­ing the US.

It al­so said that cit­i­zens of ten coun­tries, in­clud­ing Haiti, Pak­istan and Rus­sia would have their visas heav­i­ly re­strict­ed, and 22 coun­tries, in­clud­ing An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, St Kitts and Nevis, and St Lu­cia would be giv­en 60 days to clear up per­ceived de­fi­cien­cies sug­gest­ed by US au­thor­i­ties.

The re­port sug­gest­ed that the clas­si­fi­ca­tion was based on con­cerns over in­ad­e­quate se­cu­ri­ty prac­tices for is­su­ing pass­ports, in­suf­fi­cient in­for­ma­tion shar­ing on trav­ellers, and the “sell­ing” of cit­i­zen­ship to cit­i­zens from banned coun­tries.

All the Caribbean is­lands, giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to be­come com­pli­ant, have Cit­i­zen by In­vest­ment pro­grammes that give for­eign in­vestors the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ob­tain cit­i­zen­ship.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment yes­ter­day, For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne did not di­rect­ly re­fer to the pro­posed pol­i­cy, which is yet to be of­fi­cial­ly en­dorsed and im­ple­ment­ed by the US Gov­ern­ment led by Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump.

How­ev­er, he sought to high­light this coun­try’s pos­i­tive diplo­mat­ic re­la­tion­ship with the US.

“What I can say on record is that Trinidad and To­ba­go has been work­ing ex­treme­ly close­ly with the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca on a wide range of mat­ters,” he said.

“Our col­lab­o­ra­tions re­main re­spect­ful and pro­duc­tive and have been re­cent­ly fur­ther en­hanced at cer­tain lev­els.”

Browne said that he host­ed reg­u­lar in­for­mal meet­ings with se­nior of­fi­cials of the US Em­bassy to en­sure both sides were well in­formed of key de­vel­op­ments.

“We have found our coun­ter­parts on the US side to be en­gag­ing, very fo­cused on open com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and re­cep­tive to our per­spec­tives and pri­or­i­ties,” Browne said.

“The re­la­tion­ship is be­ing re­spon­si­bly man­aged and ex­pand­ed in the best in­ter­est of our re­spec­tive peo­ples.”

Min­is­ter com­plains to UK High Com­mis­sion­er over sud­den visa im­po­si­tion

In a press re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day, Browne’s min­istry not­ed that on Thurs­day, he held a meet­ing with Unit­ed King­dom High Com­mis­sion­er Jon Mark Dean over that coun­try’s re­cent de­ci­sion to in­tro­duce a visa for T&T cit­i­zens seek­ing to en­ter the UK.

“Min­is­ter Browne took the oc­ca­sion to make a for­mal com­plaint about the visa im­po­si­tion on our na­tion­als and in­clud­ed ref­er­ence to the lack of ap­pro­pri­ate no­tice and the ab­sence of a tru­ly col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach from the Unit­ed King­dom to­ward solv­ing their asy­lum-process ob­ser­va­tions,” it said.

It not­ed that Dean con­firmed pre­vi­ous re­ports that the pol­i­cy was im­ple­ment­ed due to an in­crease in asy­lum seek­ers from T&T and gave an ex­pla­na­tion for the lack of no­tice.

“The High Com­mis­sion­er ac­knowl­edged that the im­po­si­tion of the visa re­quire­ment was sud­den, ad­vised that his team would seek to pro­vide as much pub­lic guid­ance as pos­si­ble dur­ing and be­yond this ini­tial pe­ri­od, and em­pha­sised that the visa im­po­si­tion would be re­viewed dur­ing the course of the year,” it said.

It said that both par­ties agreed to work col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly to­wards an ac­tion plan in an ef­fort to ad­dress the sit­u­a­tion that led to the visa im­po­si­tion.