It is the ab­solute right of any sov­er­eign coun­try to de­ter­mine which non-na­tion­als can en­ter its ter­ri­to­ry, and the ba­sis on which those non-na­tion­als can do so.

While the im­po­si­tion of visa re­stric­tions is a fair­ly nor­mal part of life in the 21st cen­tu­ry, the de­ci­sion of Unit­ed States Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump on Tues­day to sus­pend the en­try in­to the US of na­tion­als of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da and Do­mini­ca seek­ing new US visas, reg­is­tered fair­ly high on the sur­prise scale.

The US ad­min­is­tra­tion im­posed the sus­pen­sion on the two Cari­com mem­ber states, based on its claim that the coun­tries sold pass­ports to non-na­tion­als un­der the Cit­i­zen­ship-by-In­vi­ta­tion Pro­gramme (CIP) with­out im­pos­ing a res­i­den­cy re­quire­ment. The Trump procla­ma­tion said do­ing so "pos­es chal­lenges for screen­ing and vet­ting pur­pos­es."

Tues­day's im­me­di­ate re­sponse by An­tigua and Bar­bu­da was that they had passed re­forms to their CIP leg­is­la­tion, im­pos­ing a manda­to­ry 30-day phys­i­cal res­i­den­cy re­quire­ment to qual­i­fy for a CIP pass­port.

There are many peo­ple who may hold the view that be­cause T&T does not sell CIP pass­ports, Mr Trump's en­try re­stric­tion of Caribbean na­tion­als seek­ing US visas from Jan­u­ary 1, 2026, is of lit­tle or no con­cern to us. How­ev­er, those who be­lieve this would be naive.

This is­sue is one that lo­cal res­i­dents seek­ing US visas should at least be mind­ful of, be­cause one of the cen­tral el­e­ments of Mr Trump's procla­ma­tion is that the US is deny­ing en­try to coun­tries whose cit­i­zens over­stay in the US.

In the same procla­ma­tion, res­i­dents of 19 most­ly African coun­tries were al­so barred be­cause some na­tion­als of those coun­tries over­stayed their vis­its to the US.

In its 2024 over­stay re­port, the US found 175,585 T&T hold­ers of B1/B2 (vis­i­tor) visas were ex­pect­ed to de­part there for the 12-month pe­ri­od end­ing Sep­tem­ber 30, 2024. Some 1,090 of those T&T vis­i­tors were de­ter­mined to have over­stayed their pre­scribed vis­it pe­ri­od. As a re­sult, T&T had an over­stay rate of 0.62 per cent for B1/B2 vis­i­tors.

The rate of over­stay­ing for T&T hold­ers of non-im­mi­grant stu­dent and ex­change visas, which are F, M and J, was 2.42 per cent. As a com­par­i­son, the US sus­pend­ed the en­try of na­tion­als of Sene­gal for hav­ing a B-1/B-2 visa over­stay rate of 4.30 per cent and a stu­dent and ex­change vis­i­tor over­stay rate of 13.07 per cent.

Those who ques­tion what could pos­si­bly ac­count for T&T na­tion­als go­ing from a vis­i­tor visa over­stay rate of less than one per cent to a per­cent­age that might cause the sus­pen­sion of en­try in­to the US, clear­ly must have for­got­ten the main rea­son the Unit­ed King­dom im­posed a visa re­quire­ment on T&T na­tion­als in March this year. The UK took that de­ci­sion in re­sponse to what it claimed was a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in ap­pli­ca­tions for asy­lum by T&T na­tion­als at UK bor­ders.

The UK de­ci­sion, and the rea­son for it, came as a shock to many peo­ple in this coun­try. That is be­cause many peo­ple were sur­prised there were T&T na­tion­als mak­ing asy­lum claims in num­bers that caused the British au­thor­i­ties to im­pose the visa re­quire­ment.

Giv­en the eco­nom­ic dif­fi­cul­ties T&T faces, there is a dis­tinct pos­si­bil­i­ty that more na­tion­als of this coun­try may choose to over­stay their wel­come in the US, po­ten­tial­ly caus­ing is­sues for all hold­ers of US visas.