TURKS AND CAICOS TOUGHENS UP IMMIGRATION AND BORDER CONTROL

By Staff Writer

The Turks and Caicos Islands government is pushing through a series of major changes to its immigration and naturalisation laws. Speaking on an interview programme of the ruling Progressive National Party(PNP), Deputy Premier, Jamell Robinson, said the government is working on implementing what he described as a “groundbreaking digital borders project”.

As explained by Mr. Robinson: “This includes the introduction of biometrics, setting up a border force database so we could know all who’s in the country, the ETA system, and a few other things that will be kind of groundbreaking on being able to handle from a digital standpoint, who’s in our country and when.”

The changes which have been under consideration for quite some time include streamlining immigration and border control processes, making them more rigorous, and upgrading the related screening technology and stricter enforcement.

This would be applied particularly for residency and citizenship status applications, as well as issuing work permits.

A new Labour Market Information System (LMIS) is also being rolled out alongside an Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) system.

Deputy Premier Robinson further pointed out that a challenge for the TCI government is clamping down on the extensive illegal immigration, which has been problematic for the territory. He spoke of recurring instances of some persons obtaining citizenship status by exploiting weaknesses in the system.

“We have a situation where we have a lot of people in this country that might be here illegally. We have the sort of persons who come in illegally being able to get their passports ‘legally’...but they came in illegally,” Mr Robinson said.

Another crucial aspect of the changes being implemented is a new and more rigid points system to qualify for residency and citizenship status.

The Deputy Premier affirmed that the upgraded and tightened criteria are intended to better enable the TCI government to eliminate shortcomings and loopholes in the immigration, border control, labour, and citizenship processes supported by effective enforcement and proper oversight.