JAMAICANS at home and in England were mixed in their reactions to yesterday’s announcement by Britain that it would impose a visa requirement for Jamaican citizens travelling to the UK with immediate effect.

“I am very sad (because) there are people who are law-abiding citizens here whose extended families are going to be tarred with a negative brush,” said Mavis Stewart who chairs the Association of Jamaicans (UK) Trust in London. “They should not penalise honest citizens of Jamaica in this way.”

The new visa requirement was announced in Kingston yesterday by Deputy British High Commissioner Phil Sinkinson, who said that the British home secretary, David Blunkett, took a long time before making the decision.

“It was not as a result of anything that has happened in the past few days,” Sinkinson told journalists at an early morning news conference at the Hilton Kingston Hotel.

He was referring to the New Year’s Eve shooting deaths of two teenagers outside a party in Birmingham, in the West Midlands.

Cousins Letisha Shakespeare, 17, and Charlene Ellis, 18, died when they were caught in an apparent shoot-out between rival drug gangs believed to be Jamaican-dominated Yardies or the so-called Homeboys, the British-born blacks who imitate Yardie violence.

The association of Jamaica to violent gang crime in the UK and British concerns about the smuggling of South American cocaine into that country via Jamaica, have long contributed to a negative image of the island in England.

Last year, it emerged that the Tony Blair administration was being pressured by parliamentarians to impose a visa regime for Jamaicans. But Downing Street said that such a measure was not on the cards.

However, yesterday, Jamaica’s foreign ministry said it had been discussing the issue with London for near two years.

“The ministry wishes to indicate that the issue of visa requirements for Jamaicans to visit the UK has been the subject of bilateral exchanges, including ministerial consultations, for about two years dating back to early 2001,” the ministry said in a statement.

“In all of these discussions, which have also involved the Jamaican High Commission in London, Jamaica has sought to prevent the imposition of a visa regime, while at the same time recognising the sovereign right of Britain to determine its immigration procedures,” the ministry said.

In London, Blunkett had said that the regime was imposed because of abuse of Britain’s immigration laws.

According to Blunkett, in the pre-Christmas season, Jamaicans accounted for 20 per cent of all passengers refused entry into Britain and he had become concerned about what he called an unacceptably high number of Jamaican visitors who absconded — at a rate of 150 a month for the first half of 2002.

He claimed also that only half the children who arrived in Britain via Gatwick Airport returned to Jamaica.

“The UK has strong links with Jamaica which contribute to the richness and diversity of our country,” Blunkett said. “Visas will not stop genuine visitors from Jamaica coming to the UK, but this will mean they will no longer spend long hours at immigration control on arrival.”

Yesterday, Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade Minister K D Knight told the Observer that while he regretted the decision, he preferred “the imposition on the grounds of immigration breaches than on the grounds of reckless criminal behaviour”.

In London, Jamaica’s high commissioner to the UK, Maxine Roberts, said she was disappointed by the move and its timing.

“The timing of the announcement is unfortunate as some media houses have been linking Jamaica with the unfortunate deaths of the two young women in Birmingham and the man involved in the siege in East London. These persons are British citizens, born in the UK,” she said.

But in Kingston, while there was some hostility to the British move, some people felt that it was coming and justified.

“I think if it’s for the protection of their country, it’s fair,” said Wayne Myers, a 37 year-old taxi driver. “You can’t go up to their country and do anything you want. In a sense it’s right.”

Added Michael Campbell, a 31 year-old gas station attendant: “It’s because of our own carelessness and the drugs, so we have no one to blame but ourselves. The good have to suffer for the bad.”

But Charmaine Cameron, a legal secretary, disagreed. “I don’t think that’s fair,” she told the Observer. “I think that it’s a money-making thing.”

The visas range in cost from £35 (J$2,900) for a standard single entry, to £150 (J$12,000) for a 10-year multiple.