ROSEAU, Do­mini­ca—Prime Min­is­ter Roo­sevelt Sker­rit yes­ter­day thanked the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment for sus­pend­ing a procla­ma­tion that would have pre­vent­ed Do­mini­cans from en­ter­ing the North Amer­i­can coun­try from Jan­u­ary 1 next year.

Speak­ing on the state-owned DBS Ra­dio, Sker­rit said fol­low­ing dis­cus­sions with Unit­ed States of­fi­cials at the em­bassy in Bar­ba­dos, as well as the State De­part­ment in Wash­ing­ton, an agree­ment had been reached to sus­pend the procla­ma­tion that had been an­nounced on Tues­day by Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump.

“I would like to thank the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment it­self for un­der­stand­ing the sit­u­a­tion and agree­ing to set aside for the time be­ing the procla­ma­tion …and so this is good news. The anx­i­eties that we all would have should  be set aside,” Sker­rit told ra­dio lis­ten­ers, adding that Roseau was look­ing for­ward to con­tin­u­ing the good re­la­tions it has en­joyed with Wash­ing­ton in the past.

On Tues­day, Pres­i­dent Trump, in his lat­est ex­ec­u­tive or­der, said apart from An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, na­tion­als from Do­mini­ca and Haiti would al­so be af­fect­ed by the im­mi­gra­tion pol­i­cy.

Trump said some of these coun­tries iden­ti­fied in an ear­li­er procla­ma­tion, had of­fered Cit­i­zen­ship-by-In­vest­ment (CBI) with­out res­i­den­cy, which pos­es chal­lenges for screen­ing and vet­ting pur­pos­es.

Un­der the CBI pro­gramme, sev­er­al Caribbean coun­tries, in­clud­ing An­tigua and Bar­bu­da and Do­mini­ca, of­fer cit­i­zen­ship to for­eign in­vestors in re­turn for mak­ing a sub­stan­tial in­vest­ment in the so­cio-eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment of these coun­tries.

Sker­rit said his ad­min­is­tra­tion was pre­pared to “con­tin­ue work­ing with the US.

Sker­rit, who has promised to pro­vide fur­ther in­for­ma­tion on the “sus­pen­sion of the procla­ma­tion,” said Do­mini­ca, who are hold­ers of “visas of any kind are able to trav­el to the Unit­ed States past Jan­u­ary 1, 2025.”

Ear­li­er, the An­tigua and Bar­bu­da gov­ern­ment said a sim­i­lar sus­pen­sion had been af­ford­ed to its na­tion­als.

“This ap­plies to all visa cat­e­gories, in­clud­ing B-1, B-2, J, and M visas,” said An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Am­bas­sador to the Unit­ed States, Sir Ronald Sanders, adding that “for the avoid­ance of doubt, this in­cludes tourist, busi­ness, stu­dent, and oth­er valid Unit­ed States-is­sued visas.

“Sec­ond, there will be no re­vo­ca­tion of any ex­ist­ing visas is­sued to na­tion­als of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da pri­or to 31 De­cem­ber 2025,” he said in a state­ment. CMC

visa ap­pli­ca­tions sub­mit­ted af­ter Jan­u­ary 1, 2026, “these will be sub­ject to new arrange­ments that are still to be worked out with sev­er­al Caribbean coun­tries, in­clud­ing An­tigua and Bar­bu­da”.

“These arrange­ments re­late specif­i­cal­ly to the col­lec­tion of bio­met­ric in­for­ma­tion of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da pass­port hold­ers to en­sure full com­pat­i­bil­i­ty with Unit­ed States bio­met­ric sys­tems,” Saun­ders said.