Antigua PM says TCN agreement with US still being worked out

ST JOHN’S, Antigua (CMC) – The Antigua and Barbuda government is reiterating that funding and support arrangements must be put in place even as several Caribbean Community (Caricom) countries have agreed to accept third-country national (TCN) deportees from the United States.

Antigua and Barbuda is among several Caricom countries that have either signed or are still in the process of negotiating with Washington on the migration policy and, speaking on his weekly radio programme, Prime Minister Gaston Browne said that negotiations were nearing completion, but compensation and arrangements with an international organisation would be addressed separately.

“The issue of compensation, they asked us to negotiate a separate agreement with them rather than put it in the TCN itself,” he told radio listeners, adding that the government wanted to avoid accepting people before securing the resources needed to support them.

“My understanding is that some countries may have accepted individuals before making arrangements … and may not have gotten the support funding. We want to make sure that we don’t make that mistake.”

Most of the Caricom countries have publicly indicated that they have reached agreements with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to manage and collaborate on these services, which include offering transferees choices between voluntary repatriation to their home countries or local integration

Listeners were told that no first transfer would occur until the necessary arrangement with an agreed international organisation had been concluded and become operational.

Under the text, the United States would be expected to fund a competent international organisation, mutually acceptable to both governments, to provide and coordinate services for transferred individuals.

The organisation’s participation would depend on its own mandate, policies and risk assessment, along with a separate arrangement with Antigua and Barbuda.