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Passport And Immigration Personnel For The Diaspora

Jamaica is sending representatives from the Passport, Immigration and Citizenship Agency (PICA), overseas, as the agency seeks to satisfy the needs of Jamaicans living in the Diaspora.

Five staff members from PICA are to be placed in the UK, USA, and Canada for a minimum of four years, working from the London High Commission in the UK, the Consulate General’s Offices in Miami and New York, the Embassy in Washington, D.C., in the USA, and Toronto, Canada.

The group includes three Immigration Supervisors, a Senior Immigration Officer and the Director of Passport Services. Hugh Thomas, Director of Passport Services will be working in New York; Immigration Supervisors, Sasha Wedderburn, Marcus Manning and Carol Stewart will be going to Washington D.C., Toronto and London, respectively and Senior Immigration Officer, Stacey Johnston will be stationed in Miami.

Their main mandate is to assist the Jamaican missions to review passports, citizenship and visa applications to ensure that they are completed correctly and that the requisite supporting documents are provided. Executive director of PICA Jennifer McDonald indicated that the officers will undergo about three weeks of specialized training before they are deployed overseas.

The training sessions will focus on Jamaica’s foreign policy, passport laws and regulations, customer service, diplomatic immunities, citizenship and immigration laws, interviewing techniques, communication skills, and a number of other areas. With regard to the sustainability of the initiative, Miss McDonald said that PICA, in collaboration with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “will constantly be assessing and reviewing the extent to which we would need to complement those persons who are going and the extent to which the service will be required in other locations…so it will be an on-going assessment”.

She said that the deployment of the officers would not create an undue void in the operations, but that it would create opportunities for other persons to move up in the agency.

Source : JIS

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