KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

A sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in T&T na­tion­als seek­ing asy­lum in the Unit­ed King­dom (UK) has triggered its gov­ern­ment to im­ple­ment new visa mea­sures.

Ef­fec­tive March 12, Trinida­di­ans seek­ing to trav­el or pass through the UK—Eng­land, Scot­land, North Ire­land and Wales—will now need a visa, in­clud­ing for short vis­its. Pre­vi­ous­ly, Tri­nis were al­lowed visa-free trav­el to the UK.

The an­nounce­ment came from British High Com­mis­sion­er to T&T Jon Dean yes­ter­day.

Dean said, “Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­als will no longer be el­i­gi­ble to trav­el un­der the Elec­tron­ic Trav­el Au­tho­ri­sa­tion (ETA) Scheme and those plan­ning to tran­sit through the UK will now need a di­rect air­side tran­sit visa. In any coun­try, in­clud­ing the UK, se­cu­ri­ty, in­clud­ing bor­der se­cu­ri­ty, has to be our pri­or­i­ty. We reg­u­lar­ly re­view our visa and im­mi­gra­tion poli­cies to en­sure they re­main ef­fec­tive.

“On this oc­ca­sion, there’s been a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in the num­ber of un­jus­ti­fied asy­lum ap­pli­ca­tions by Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­als at the UK bor­der. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the ac­tions of a small mi­nor­i­ty have meant that our min­is­ters have had to take the dif­fi­cult de­ci­sion to in­tro­duce a visa re­quire­ment.”

He added that peo­ple who al­ready have con­firmed trav­el book­ings and an ETA will still be al­lowed to trav­el to the UK, as there is a short tran­si­tion pe­ri­od un­til April 23.

An ex­plana­to­ry mem­o­ran­dum to changes in the UK’s im­mi­gra­tion rules, sent to the par­lia­ment, yes­ter­day, said, “Trinidad and To­ba­go’s visa sta­tus will be kept un­der re­view; par­tic­u­lar­ly with re­gards to whether the visa in­tro­duc­tion af­fects the num­ber of in­di­vid­u­als claim­ing asy­lum from with­in the UK and the in­ter­nal se­cu­ri­ty sit­u­a­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

T&T now joins 66 oth­er coun­tries—in­clud­ing Ja­maica, Venezuela, Colom­bia and Afghanistan—whose na­tion­als will need a visa to en­ter the UK.

Ac­cord­ing to the UK’s asy­lum seek­ers data­base, claims from T&T jumped from an an­nu­al av­er­age of 49 be­tween 2015 and 2019 to 439 in the past year. The ap­proved ap­pli­ca­tions in­clud­ed grants of pro­tec­tion, refugee per­mis­sion and hu­man­i­tar­i­an pro­tec­tion, with the ma­jor­i­ty of ap­provals grant­ed to ap­pli­cants ages 30-49.

As a re­sult, na­tion­als will now have to pay any­where be­tween $1,077.55 (115 ster­ling) to $9,023.32 (963 ster­ling) for a visa, de­pend­ing on how long one wants to stay in the UK.

The stan­dard vis­i­tor visa al­low­ing for a max­i­mum stay of six months costs TT$11,077.55 and the long-term stan­dard vis­i­tor visa (with six months per vis­it) is $9,023.32. This is added to the av­er­age cost of a $5,000 plane tick­et to the UK.

In an im­me­di­ate re­sponse, how­ev­er, For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne said he was dis­ap­point­ed at the UK’s de­ci­sion, call­ing the move dis­pro­por­tion­ate to the is­sue at hand.

Dr Browne said, “This move is with­in their rights as a sov­er­eign na­tion, but we do not see it as a pro­por­tion­ate re­sponse to what UK au­thor­i­ties con­veyed to us, which was their ob­ser­va­tion that a rel­a­tive­ly small num­ber of T&T na­tion­als were mis­us­ing the UK im­mi­gra­tion sys­tem by be­ing processed for an ETA in the nor­mal ex­ist­ing process and then sud­den­ly ap­ply­ing for asy­lum af­ter ar­rival.

“We have not­ed that their de­ci­sion to in­tro­duce visa re­quire­ments will be kept un­der re­view. We have in­di­cat­ed our dis­ap­point­ment with the new visa re­quire­ment and will con­tin­ue our con­sis­tent en­gage­ment with our UK coun­ter­parts. We are not of the view that reg­u­lar trav­ellers to the UK should be neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ed by a rel­a­tive­ly small num­ber of per­sons who have been try­ing to abuse the British im­mi­gra­tion sys­tem.”

Al­ready, some na­tion­als with sched­uled up­com­ing flights are be­ing neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed.

Chef Aaron Far­rick said the new­ly im­posed visa re­quire­ment now re­quires him to pay for a visa he did not bud­get for.

Far­rick said, “Ba­si­cal­ly, this af­fects me due to the fact that I’d be trav­el­ling at the end of April to pur­sue a diplo­ma in Barcelona, and I’ll be in tran­sit through Lon­don for three days due to a can­cel­la­tion of my orig­i­nal flight. I now have to ap­ply for a visa in or­der to keep my flight arrange­ments. Added to this, I’d al­so just re­ceived an of­fer to in­tern at a pres­ti­gious restau­rant in the UK for a month, so I have no choice but to ap­ply for the six-month stan­dard visa, which of course was not part of my orig­i­nal bud­get when the year be­gan.”

Mean­while, one Tri­ni who was grant­ed asy­lum ex­plained why he be­lieves the UK has made such a move.

Dil­lian John­son said, “From the UK’s per­spec­tive, they are prob­a­bly mak­ing that de­ci­sion based on fi­nances, how much it is cost­ing to house peo­ple be­cause they have to house them. They have to pay their le­gal fees. They have to pay their med­ical ex­pens­es, every­thing. How­ev­er, the asy­lum sys­tem does not al­low them to go back to their home coun­tries to re­al­ly do a thor­ough search, so prob­a­bly a lot of peo­ple were pre­sent­ing not what meets the eye, so I guess that’s where they are mak­ing their de­ci­sions based on.”

Guardian Me­dia al­so spoke to one trav­el agency which said sev­er­al of its up­com­ing trips to Eu­rope will be af­fect­ed, as many cus­tomers do not have a visa and may face fi­nan­cial chal­lenges and time con­straints in at­tain­ing one be­fore their flights.