Dr Amery Browne, Min­is­ter of For­eign and CARI­COM Af­fairs, has for­mal­ly lodged a com­plaint with the Unit­ed King­dom over its re­cent de­ci­sion to im­pose a visa re­quire­ment on Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­als trav­el­ing to the UK.

In a meet­ing with His Ex­cel­len­cy Jon Mark Dean, UK High Com­mis­sion­er to Trinidad and To­ba­go, Min­is­ter Browne ex­pressed con­cerns over the lack of pri­or no­tice and the ab­sence of a col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach in ad­dress­ing the UK’s con­cerns about asy­lum seek­ers.

The UK gov­ern­ment an­nounced the new visa re­quire­ment On Wednes­day, cit­ing an in­crease in asy­lum claims from Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­als.

The pol­i­cy, which took im­me­di­ate ef­fect, now re­quires all Trinidad and To­ba­go cit­i­zens to ap­ply for a visa be­fore trav­el­ing to or tran­sit­ing through the UK, end­ing decades of visa-free trav­el be­tween the two coun­tries.

The abrupt change has dis­rupt­ed trav­el plans for many na­tion­als, prompt­ing diplo­mat­ic en­gage­ment from the Trinidad and To­ba­go gov­ern­ment.

Dur­ing the dis­cus­sions at the Min­istry’s head­quar­ters, Min­is­ter Browne em­pha­sized the hard­ship caused by the sud­den pol­i­cy shift, par­tic­u­lar­ly for those with pre­arranged trav­el plans.

He al­so raised con­cerns about the ad­e­qua­cy of tran­si­tion­al arrange­ments, high­light­ing cas­es where trav­el­ers have al­ready faced dif­fi­cul­ties.

High Com­mis­sion­er Dean ac­knowl­edged the sud­den­ness of the de­ci­sion and ex­plained that the pri­ma­ry rea­son for the visa re­quire­ment was the in­creased num­ber of Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­als seek­ing asy­lum in the UK.

He as­sured that his team would work to pro­vide as much pub­lic guid­ance as pos­si­ble and con­firmed that the visa pol­i­cy would be re­viewed lat­er this year.

Both of­fi­cials agreed to col­lab­o­rate on an ac­tion plan to ad­dress the con­cerns that led to the visa re­quire­ment, with the shared goal of work­ing to­wards its re­moval in the fu­ture.