The US Con­sulate in T&T says the tem­po­rary op­er­a­tional pause in new ap­pli­ca­tions for U.S. stu­dent visas (F-1, M1 and J-1) for T&T na­tion­als is a “short op­er­a­tional pause and does not sig­ni­fy a change in US stu­dent visa pol­i­cy” to­wards this coun­try.

This is ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of For­eign and CARI­COM Af­fairs. In a state­ment on Mon­day af­ter­noon, the min­istry said has been in di­rect com­mu­ni­ca­tion with its U.S. coun­ter­parts lo­cal­ly.

The state­ment said, “It is im­por­tant to note that U.S. stu­dent visa ap­point­ment dates are typ­i­cal­ly gen­er­at­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly one month in ad­vance. There­fore, all stu­dents who have al­ready se­cured and re­ceived con­fir­ma­tion for their visa in­ter­view ap­point­ments will have their ap­point­ments ho­n­oured as sched­uled. The cur­rent pause specif­i­cal­ly per­tains to the sub­mis­sion of new stu­dent visa ap­pli­ca­tions.”