As political speeches go, it struck familiar themes. An island nation was being overrun by dangerous criminals, taking advantage of its asylum system. Word was spreading that the country was a soft touch. And as ever, millions of ordinary folks were paying the price.

The violence is largely confined to the ghettoes, and many struggle to see why Britain’s asylum system classifies Trinidad as a warzone from which its citizens deserved sanctuary

The violence is largely confined to the ghettoes, and many struggle to see why Britain’s asylum system classifies Trinidad as a warzone from which its citizens deserved sanctuary

Nigel Farage, on the stump in Clacton-on-Sea in 2024? Or Home Secretary Shabana Mahmoud, perhaps, unveiling her tough new Danish-style migration policy earlier this month? No, the speaker was Keith Rowley, the prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago, 3,000 miles away in the Caribbean. But the island he was talking about was indeed Britain.

The UK has seen a nine-fold spike in the number of asylum claimants from Trinidad in the last decade – many of them criminals fleeing gang feuds. Britain’s response, however, has not been to weed out the bad apples, but to slap a blanket visa requirement on Trinidad’s 1.5 million people.It is a huge inconvenience for the country’s law-abiding majority, a lot of whom have relatives in Britain, and who could previously visit without prior paperwork. Now they must pay £115 for a visa application and wait three weeks for it to be processed. Small wonder, then, that when the new visa regime was imposed in March last year, the reaction was fury. In a speech denouncing it, Rowley demanded to know why Britain wasn’t simply tightening up its asylum laws instead.‘Once you land in British territory, it doesn’t matter who you are or what you’ve done, all you do is say you are asking for refugee status, and that you have come to them for aid and succour,’ he said.  The imposition of the visa requirement was a blow to Rowley’s ruling People’s National Movement party, which lost elections the following month........

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