Dominica fighting to reclaim visa free travel to UK

An unsurprising change of government in Britain now means that Dominica may have to restart efforts to convince London to reinstate visa free travel for locals.

Until labor replaced the conservatives earlier this month, talks between Britain and Dominica were at an advanced stage but the change of the political guard is attracting fears in Dominica that the process may have to be restarted as the new cabinet settles in.

Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit, who briefed reporters on Monday, said he remained “hopeful” that a deal can be reached for Dominicans to resume traveling to the United Kingdom without the need to apply for visas.

The abolition of visa free travel was implemented a year ago while London had been expressing fears about the security of the Citizenship by Investment Program (CIP), which offers golden passports and local citizenship to foreigners who pay a minimum of about $200,000 into real estate education or to business ventures. Grenada, St. Lucia, Antigua, St. Kitts are the other participating countries.

European nations, Canada, the UK and the US have been pressuring the CIP states to improve due diligence on applicants as some have taken up citizenship purely to obtain a passport and travel as a local to more than 100 countries which do not mandate visas for these CIP nations.

London had said recently that “careful consideration of Dominica’s operation of a citizenship by investment scheme has shown clear and evident abuse of the scheme, including the granting of citizenship to individuals known to pose a risk to the UK.”

Countering these claims, PM Skerrit said talks had been far advanced before the change of government. Britain, through then Minister James Cleverly had signaled a positive response to a request for a review in correspondence to Dominica.

“It was a very positive letter. There is one outstanding ongoing matter that we have to bring to conclusion and we are working on that. There has been some push back from a legal standpoint, but I believe we will be pushing hard on it. I will be writing to the new minister to update her on what we have done and what we are doing and to respond to the letter of her predecessor. I believe that all things considered and the tone of the engagement with the UK government over the last several months, I am satisfied at some point we will see a visa free travel to the United Kingdom and of course some of the additional actions, which are actions they did not ask for.”

At the behest of the EU, the CIP countries have mostly doubled the minimum payments for applicants and have agreed to tighten up probes of the backgrounds of applicants.