<\/a>As Hurricane Isabel posed a threat to The Bahamas, the U.S. embassy and the Department of Homeland Security in Washington on Sunday closed the facility and furloughed employees. <\/P><\/p>\nBut on Monday when it was determined that The Bahamas was out of harm’s way, Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials requested an “urgent” review of the closure. <\/P><\/p>\n
Mr. Mitchell also said Tuesday that the meeting might have had some effect on the decision to re-open the pre-clearance facilities. <\/P><\/p>\n
“Their position was that they would review it every 48 hours. We wanted to impress upon them the urgency of the matter for The Bahamas, and I think they understood the point,” the Minister said. <\/P><\/p>\n
Also, during the initial closure, the Embassy assured that arrangements had been made with airlines servicing the United States to avoid “any inconvenience or disruption” of Bahamians’ travel plans. <\/P><\/p>\n
According to a Bahamasair marketing department spokesman, the national flag-carrier’s sales were not affected, but it was understood that the withdrawal of the facilities may have dissuaded a number of prospective travelers. <\/P><\/p>\n
According to Mr. Mitchell, “I went down to the airport myself and spoke to the airlines. They said that they had a couple of people call in and asked what the position was, and, in turn, they told them not to bother to come.” <\/P><\/p>\n
During the temporary closure period, the embassy’s consular section remained open to “expeditiously process” visa applications for Bahamians with valid passports. <\/P><\/p>\n
In their statement, U.S. officials said they appreciated the understanding and cooperation of the Bahamian travelling public during the temporary, precautionary closure of the facilities due to hurricane forecasts. <\/P><\/p>\n
A Bahamas-USA Pre-clearance agreement allows passengers traveling from designated Bahamian airports to be treated as domestic passengers when they arrive in the United States. <\/P><\/p>\n
By Khashan Poitier, The Nassau Guardian <\/B><\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The U.S. embassy announced yesterday that the temporary withdrawal of pre-clearance personnel at Nassau and Freeport has been lifted and normal services will resume today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10223285771444175_51037792744":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-244041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-headlines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244041\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}