by Theo Alleyne
SCARBOROUGH, Tobago, March 30 2015 – During a speech on March 1, 2015, Venezuelan President, Nicolas Maduro, announced that while he was still willing to accept Americans as tourists, he was adopting a series of restrictive measures on American citizens for national security reasons.
One such restriction is a new tourist visa requirement for American citizens travelling to Venezuela. The cost of the tourist visa will be $30 USD, which should generate more than $1 million USD for Venezuela based on American tourist trends in Venezuela during 2014, according to Venezuela’s Tourism Ministry data. This development was a striking blow to the standing of the USA passport, which dropped from the second to the third most powerful passport in the world, for visa free travel. So I thought, what about Caricom? What are the four most powerful passports in Caricom for visa free travel?
Trinidad and Tobago holds the number four spot. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, holders of a passport from the land of the Scarlet Ibis can travel to 103 countries around the world without a visa. Some databases indicate that Trinbagonians can only travel to 100 countries visa free; however, my research indicates that it is 103.
The number three spot goes to St. Kitts and Nevis, which was tied with Antigua and Barbuda, for the number two spot throughout most of 2014. You may recall that in December 2013, the St. Kitts and Nevis Citizenship by Investment Programme (CIP) made international headlines when an Iranian national presented a diplomatic passport issued by St. Kitts and Nevis in Canada. The holder of the passport, Mr. Moghadam, was made a special envoy for St. Kitts and Nevis to Turkey and Azerbaijan. Mr. Moghadam had allegedly purchased his citizenship for $1 million USD. It appears that Canadian authorities were very displeased with the situation and, effective November 22, 2014, Canada imposed visa requirements on citizens of St. Kitts and Nevis. In so doing, holders of a St. Kitts passport can now travel to 131 countries visa free, while Antiguans and Barbudans, have the benefit of traveling to 132 countries visa free.
The number one most powerful Caricom passports belong to The Bahamas and Barbados. Maybe this should not surprise us, since the Bahamian dollar shares the same value as the US dollar, and the Barbadian dollar has held constant at 50 cents to the US dollar. Holders of The Bahamas or Barbados Passport can travel to 138 countries visa free.
In the near future, Trinidad and Tobago will add 26 more visa free countries in Europe, but it will not improve its rankings unless St. Kitts and Nevis looses visa waiver status with two or more countries.
Okay. Yes, I heard you asking the question, so I will answer it to close. Haiti has the least powerful Caricom Passport.
(Theo Alleyne is a travel professional and travel author with more than 15 years of experience personalising cruises, rail vacations and all inclusive resort getaways)
In what manner are these “passports “powerful”. None of them reflect the introduction of capital generated in the Caribbean to be invested elsewhere. At best we are ‘allowed’ into other people’s country to spend our money, because we have no scaled markets in our own setting. Moreover, the Bahamian dollar does not have an equal value to the US dollar. The Bahamian dollar has no value. It is merely pegged to the US dollar.