- St. Vincent denies migrant charter flights rights to land
The St. Vincent government will not allow the Caribbean country to serve as a transit point for migrants from Asia and Africa journeying to the US southern border.
The island government announced on Sunday that it had rejected permission for two charters to land at Argyle International Airport.
On Sunday, Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves announced that two flights, one from Nigeria with 374 passengers and few Nigerians, and another from Dubai, passing through Morocco and onward to Argyle, were operating with a charter business from Bulgaria.
“The bulk of the people coming are from Bangladesh, Nepal, Cameroon, a significant number of Indians, and people from Sri Lanka. There have also been requests for feeder companies to serve the entities departing from Morocco and the three regional carriers in Latin America. All of those have been refused permission.”
According to Gonsalves, the authorities are aware of the individuals’ names, nationalities, and dates of passport issuance.
“Most of them were issued very recently. There are many things that can give you an indication, but most of them were issued fairly recently. Clearly, they want to come here. In theory, hang around for a week and go to other places in Latin America and Central America. But we are not going to be allowing any of that.”
SVG Imposes Visa Restrictions
On Wednesday, the government imposed visa restrictions on several nations.
“We already have visa restrictions on Nigerians. We have imposed visa restrictions on Cameroonians, Nepalese people, and passport holders from Bangladesh.
Meeting with the Indian High Commissioner
The Indian High Commissioner is going to be here next week, and I am going to speak to him about this. They were talking about moving people this week, but there was a denial for them to land in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.”
Gonsalves said these charters wanted to use St. Vincent and the Grenadines as a transit point to go elsewhere.
“Given what has happened in some other countries, it is difficult to be certain. Having landed here, if they don’t transit out of here, you’re stuck with people who you would not normally allow to come to stay for any prolonged period of time.”
“We have relationships with Nigeria’s government, Dubai, and Morocco. And we would welcome tourism, but it would be done through structured means, and you would have the governments of those countries saying, Well, this is how we are cooperating on tourism.” Incidentally, the people who are coming out of Dubai are not people from Dubai and not people from the United Arab Emirates. So certain questions arise as to why persons may wish to come, and the questions that would arise would touch on the law in relation to, among other things, trafficking in persons.”
Bulgarian and EU officials were informed.
“In relation to Bulgaria, I’ve informed by telephone conversation the ambassador to the European Union and outlined that although Bulgaria is a member of the European Union and Bulgaria has recently joined the Schengen visa zone as of March 31st, I wanted to indicate to the European Union that we are imposing visa restrictions on a member of the European Union and that we are doing it for the transitory purpose of persons and to control our airspace.”
Gonsalves said authorities have the names of 23 people who were on this list, and several of them have sought to enter through other Caribbean countries near St. Vincent and were refused entry.
“We have activated this information with the regional security agencies to which we belong, and all of this information that we possess will be sent to all our international partners involved in assisting us to maintain citizen security. And to help us be consistent with our international obligations.”.
“I want to say this to the people in St. Vincent and the world. We are interested in tourism; however, we are not interested in activities that may compromise us in many ways,” Gonsalves stated.
