Pregnant? No US visa

Non-immigrant visa officers working out of the United States Embassy in Port of Spain were being trained, up to February of this year, to refuse visas to certain groups of applicants.

Among those who had virtually no chance of getting a visa were pregnant women, women who already had a child in the US, and locals going to America for job training.

The actions of the US Embassy officials were illegal, according to an internal inspection done by the US State Department’s Office of the Inspector General. The visa officers were told to follow US visa application laws.

The investigation was done over a two-week period from late January. The inspection took place shortly after former US ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago Roy Austin completed his tenure.

The report, deemed ’sensitive but unclassified’, was published on the State Department’s website several months ago.

The embassy’s public affairs officer, Matthew Cassetta, told the Express that, since the report was written, State Department officials had visited and ’found that everything is functioning as it should in the consulate’.