Antigua and Barbuda Offers to Accept No More Than 28 Third-Country Nationals a Year

Prime Minister Gaston Browne said that his government has provided the United States with an alternative proposal which would cap the number of third-country nationals the country would be asked to accept.

According to the Prime Minister, his government rejected the United States' initial proposal on the number of third-country nationals the country would be asked to accept, countering with a plan to accept only seven individuals per quarter and a set of additional safeguards that have now been sent back to Washington for a response.

Browne made the disclosure during his weekly show.

"We heard from the U.S. just over a week ago, they proposed that we take seven persons per month," Browne told listeners. "We said to them that is too much, and we'll take seven per quarter, and that'll be about 28 in a year."

The figure amounts to a ceiling of 28 individuals annually, a sharp reduction from what Browne described as Washington's original monthly framework.
Browne said the government had also written back to the United States with several additional conditions attached to any final arrangement.

Among them is a requirement that no individual be accepted without a valid travel document.

"We're not accepting anyone without a travel document," Browne said, "because if they don't have a travel document, then clearly we'll be stuck with them."

He also pointed to the need for guaranteed financial support through the International Organization for Migration, citing concerns that another country involved in a similar arrangement had failed to receive IOM funding after not submitting information on time.

"We don't want to fall in that situation," Browne said. "We want to make sure that if or when we accept these TCN nationals, that at least there's some financial support to support them in the interim."

The Prime Minister was clear that the country's participation in the arrangement itself is not in dispute, only its scope.

"There's no question as to whether or not we're going to take TCN nationals," he said, "but we want to limit the amount that we take, and at the same time we have put certain safeguards in the agreement."

The Prime Minister said Ambassador to the United States Sir Ronald Sanders would issue a statement early in the coming week outlining the government's proposed framework for the public.

Browne also committed to bringing any final agreement before Parliament once terms are settled with Washington.

The disclosure comes after Ambassador Sanders said as recently as September 18 that no agreement had been reached and that talks were only just resuming, following a resolution passed by the House of Representatives on July 14 that established a 12-point framework barring any automatic or open-ended arrangement.