The signing was done in a brief ceremony held on December 6, between Premier Dr Natalio Wheatley and Lieutenant Colonel Michael Jones on behalf of CARICOM IMPACS in the presence of other government and BVI Airports Authority officials. 

Government officials have described the signing as a regional effort for security and border protection.

The Premier recently disclosed that the API agreement will help to streamline the arrival of passengers into the territory and told reporters at a recent press conference that the new system will help with due diligence.

“This will help us tremendously because even before someone gets on a plane, you’ll receive the information here in the Virgin Islands, which will allow us to be able to scrutinise the persons on the list, do our due diligence, so that when they get here, it’s not a very long process for them to be processed because we would’ve had the information prior to their arrival,” the Premier said.

During the signing, Premier Wheatley said: “I am happy that the Virgin Islands is formally joining … the regional effort for security and border protection, through the signing of this Memorandum of Understanding for the exchange of Advanced Passenger [Information] between the Government of the Virgin Islands and the Caribbean Community Implementation Agency for Crime and Security.”

According to the Premier, the API System allows for some of the screening that must be done on arriving travellers to be completed before they arrive on the territory’s doorsteps, which he explained will allow for faster processing. 

“We can have a greater level of comfort because we know that the persons we are admitting into the territory have been screened against international databases by the API System,” the Premier said. 

He added: “We also feel good knowing that we are passing forward the same benefits to countries that receive travellers from the Virgin Islands when we transmit API to the system.”