Jamaicans who overstayed their time in the US due to COVID-19 won’t be penalized
(Jamaica Observer) Jamaicans, who visited the United States and overstayed their time as a result of COVID-19 travel restrictions, will not be penalized by the United States Immigration department.
Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade Senator Kamina Johnson Smith made the announcement recently during a virtual town hall meeting with over 400 Jamaicans in the United States.
“I spoke with the US Ambassador to Jamaica Donald Tapia who indicated that he has been in touch with his Consular department which confirmed that from the date your visa expires, you are granted an extra six months to stay in the US,” the minister said.
“If you applied and did not get through with an extension, just keep the proof of that you applied, as you will be flagged in the system, so that when you come home and apply again, it won’t be viewed that you overstayed. You will be noted in the system as someone who tried to comply and the fact that you were out of status due to travel restrictions will not be held against you in your next application,” she added.
“This is a positive development to have certainty around, and I want to thank Jamaica’s Ambassador to US Audrey Marks and the Embassy and Consulate team for reaching out in that regards and assisting in these arrangements.”
Johnson Smith said there were 9,000 thousand Jamaicans who are registered on the COVID-19 web-site to return home to Jamaica.
“What we have to do is move to a situation where we are able to allow in more Jamaicans at a time. As have already indicated, the government has instituted a controlled re-entry program to ensure that we do not overwhelm the public health system. We want to safeguard all our processes for ensuring the health and safety of your families and communities. In addition, we want to
Jamaican Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade Kamina Johnson Smith
ensure that the work of our public health practitioners who we praise every day, will not be undone by bringing in too many persons to be tested, or too many persons who can’t be accommodated in quarantine,” she said.
The minister also assured those who registered on the JAMCOVID19 site and have not received any further responses other than ‘pending’ that they would shortly be getting updates
SANTIAGO/LIMA, (Reuters) - Indigenous leaders are calling for help to stop oil companies drilling in the headwaters of the Amazon river in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, warning that encroaching on their homelands would destroy a bulwark against climate change.
In video shared with Reuters on International Day for Biological Diversity today, communities in Peru and Ecuador said pressure to exploit their territory would intensify as governments seek to reboot economies reeling from the virus.
“We have taken care of the rainforest all our lives and now we invite everyone to share in our vision,” Domingo Peas, a leader from Ecuador’s Achuar nation, told Reuters Television. “We need to find a new route, post-oil, for economic development, for the well-being of all humanity, not just indigenous people.”
The Achuar are among 20 indigenous nationalities representing almost 500,000 people living in a swathe of rainforest straddling the Peru-Ecuador border, often referred to as the Amazon Sacred
Headwaters.
Existing and proposed oil and gas blocks cover 280,000 square miles in the region, an area larger than Texas, according to a report published in December by international advocacy groups including Amazon Watch and Stand.earth.
Oil is currently being extracted from 7% of these blocks. Ecuador and Peru have plans to exploit at least an additional 40%, including in forests teeming with wildlife, such as Ecuador’s Yasuní National Park, the groups say.
Home to jaguars, pink river dolphins, anacondas, howler monkeys and thousands of other species, the region, in many areas barely touched by the modern world, is seen as integral to the wider health of the Amazon, the world’s largest rainforest.
Scientists fear that the ecosystem has now been cleared so extensively to grow soy and other export crops that it could flip from being a net absorber of carbon dioxide into a major emitter of the greenhouse gas.
With massive fires last year underscoring rampant deforestation in Brazil, preserving pristine forest in remote parts of Peru and Ecuador offers a unique opportunity to nurture the resilience of the wider biome, indigenous leaders say.
“Caring for the forests of the Amazon, is caring for your life and future generations,” said Rosa Cerda, vice president of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of the Ecuadorian Amazon.
Although communities in Ecuador and Peru have had some success in using lawsuits to block new exploration, past oil and mining projects suggest that carving new roads through trackless landscapes can trigger rapid deforestation. Leaks from pipelines pollute rivers used for drinking water, harming people and wildlife.
on their status as the government was “moving to a protocol that allows us to balance our testing with both home quarantine and state quarantine.”
“Essentially the process is being revisited to see how we can bring in more Jamaicans at a time. Right now, it’s very people intensive and we are guided all the time by the public health requirements and the capacity of our quarantine and isolation facilities,” she said.
“What we are trying to do is move to technology where we can allow the monitoring to take place without requiring an individual public health nurse who would normally have to go out and visit the location and make an assessment, and move to one where you are allowed the discipline of self-regulation and in those circumstances have the APP to monitor movements,” she explained.