Tuesday, January 9, 2007

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados: The countries of the Caribbean are finally beginning to come together to operate as a single nation and to make travel to and between the various islands and nations much easier than ever before.
 
All of this has been precipitated by the hosting of the Cricket World Cup (CWC), the third largest global sporting event, by ten Caribbean countries and enabling those visitors to move freely between those ten countries during that time as if they were a single country.
 
This historic agreement which will be in effect between February 1 and May 15 2007 (to cover the actual dates of March 5 to April 28 for the Cricket World Cup) promises to make travel to and between Caribbean countries much easier for cricket fans, other visitors and Caribbean nationals.
 
The ten nations participating in this so called Single Domestic Space are Antigua & Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, St Kitts & Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent & the Grenadines and Trinidad & Tobago.
 
This will mean that during the period announced, visitors to these countries, once they have cleared Immigration & Customs at their first port of entry, will be free to travel to and within all of the other nine countries as if they were a single nation. This initiative promises to be a substantial boon for multi-destination travel within the region even for travel for purposes beyond Cricket World Cup.
 
All of this good news comes, however, with some unintended consequences. As with the creation of the European Union, some countries that did not require a visa for certain nationals to visit will now require those visitors to obtain a visa.
 
That is a natural result of the protracted negotiations within the ten countries on their different visa regimes and unfortunately the announcement of the affected countries and their nationals was made only in the middle of December 2006.
 
There is no question that overall, inconvenience to the travelling public has been minimized as more than 95% of the current visitors to those ten countries will be able to visit without the need to get a visa. The full list of those nationals that will not require a visa is provided below. All other nationals will need to apply for the Special Caricom Visa to visit any of the countries in the Single Domestic Space between February 1st and May 15th 2007.
 
Because travel and tourism are so important to the economy of the Caribbean, officials will put an extraordinary number of initiatives in place to facilitate the issuance of visas to those visitors that have been affected. Some of these initiatives include a special web site (www.caricomimpacs.org) for the application of visas including answers to frequently asked questions, a 24 hour hotline to address any concerns, a three day turn around for requests for visas after receipt of complete applications in a processing centre, waiving of visa fees for children of age 12 and under and some special arrangements for emergencies.
 
This is a major step forward for the CARICOM group of countries to which all of these ten countries belong. CARICOM, a contraction of “Caribbean Community”, is comprised of fifteen countries but the ten hosting Cricket World Cup which are in relatively close proximity to each other have agreed to put this new arrangement to the test.

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