NO PENALTY FOR USA VISA OVERSTAYS DUE TO COVID19

By Derrick Scott

Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade Minister,
Senator Kamina Johnson-Smith.

Washington, DC. Wednesday, May 27, 2020 --Jamaicans who visited the United States and overstayed their time as a result of COVID-19 travel restrictions, will not be penalized by the United States Immigration Department.

This assurance was given to some four hundred Jamaicans in the United States by Foreign Affairs Minister Kamina Johnson-Smith, as she addressed a virtual town hall meeting organized by Jamaica’s Ambassador to the United States, Audrey Marks, on Thursday May 21.

The Foreign Affairs minister said there were nine thousand Jamaicans who are registered on the COVID-19 web-site to return home to Jamaica, “what we have to do is move to a situation where we are able to allow in more Jamaicans at a time. As previously indicated, the government has instituted a controlled re-entry program to ensure that we do not overwhelm the public health system.

“We want to safeguard all our processes for ensuring the health and safety of your families and communities. In addition, we want to ensure that the work of our public health practitioners who we praise every day, will not be undone by bringing in too many persons to be tested, or too many persons who can’t be accommodated in quarantine,” Minister Johnson-Smith declared.

The Minister assured persons who have registered on the JAMCOVID19 site but had still not received any further responses other than ‘pending” that they would shortly be getting updates on their status as the government was “moving to a protocol that allows us to balance our testing with both home quarantine and state quarantine.” “Essentially the process is being revisited to see how we can bring in more Jamaicans at a time. Right now, it’s very people-intensive and we are guided all the time by the public health requirements and the capacity of our quarantine and isolation facilities,” she said.

Jamaica’s Ambassador to the United States, 

Her Excellency Audrey Marks.

Ambassador Marks told the virtual meeting that persons who have tickets but flights were canceled, should be able to rebook their flights in another week as a number of airlines have indicated that they will be ready to resume flights to Jamaica in June. These include Jet Blue, Delta, American, South West, and Caribbean Airlines. She however cautioned that normalizing of flight schedules will remain dependent on the continued reduction in the rate of COVID 19 infection in the country.

Ambassador Marks shared that the Government of Jamaica had taken a ‘whole of government approach led specifically by the Healthy Ministry and this continued good management is now allowing the government to move towards the reopening of the economy including flights in June.

The virtual town hall meetings are hosted by Ambassador Marks and the Consuls General for New York, Alsion Wilson and Miami, Oliver Mair, with the support of the Embassy and Consular staff to meet and update the four groups of Jamaicans affected by the country’s border closure; seasonal workers, visitors, students, and ship workers, totaling over 4,000 persons in the USA.

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