MONTEGO BAY, St James — Jamaica’s Consul General to New York Alsion Wilson is calling on the Passport, Immigration and Citizenship Agency (PICA) to provide additional staff to help handle the flood of PICA-related requests her team has to process each year.

“We are doing a lot of PICA work so what we need is to ensure that PICA help us to get more staff, not the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,” she told the Jamaica Observer.

PICA falls under the Ministry of National Security.

“We just moved our consulate to a new location at 300 East 42nd Street to accommodate the vast amount of applicants that we see daily. The space is much, much larger than what we had before. It’s over 40,000 square feet; it was 23,000 before. It can accommodate more people so what we need now is more staff,” she added.

Wilson was speaking with the Observer on Monday after her participation in a discussion on ‘The Role of Jamaican Missions and Diaspora Communities/Organisations in Supporting and Sustaining Jamaicans Overseas’. It was part of activities that made up the first day of the 10th Biennial Jamaica Diaspora Conference being held at the Montego Bay Convention Centre.

She pointed out that in 2023 the consulate processed 10,181 passport applications, which she said would have been more had it not been for a brief closure of the consulate. The year before, they processed 14,000.

She stressed that while the processing of passports should be the remit of PICA, her team is doing all it can to process the mountain of applications.

Speaking during the panel discussion she mentioned some of the services they have been offering to members within the diaspora. She noted that they see 250 applicants each day, and last year fielded a little more than two million phone calls.

“We processed 764 citizenship applications and last year we processed 773 emergency certificates. We also processed 138 visas,” she added.

Wilson lauded the supporting staff that shoulders the heavy workload at the consulate in New York, and also noted the help that comes from members of the Diaspora.

“We also partner very, very heavily with members of the Diaspora. We do a lot with them. Last year we sent down about 30 or 60 nurses to come down to Jamaica to assist with various medical initiatives. We do carry a very heavy work load at the consulate,” she said.

Other members of the panel, moderated by ambassador of Jamaica to Belgium and head of mission to the European Union, Symone Betton Nayo, included minister of foreign affairs and foreign trade, Senator Kamina Johnson Smith; president of the Jamaican Women of Florida, Aisha Rainford; and high commissioner for Jamaica to Canada, Marsha Coore Lobban.