MONTEGO BAY, St James — Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade Senator Kamina Johnson Smith has announced that plans are well advanced to establish a ‘mini’ Passport, Immigration and Citizenship Agency (PICA) at the New York Mission in response to the large volume of requests for PICA-related services.

“We have been working with the Ministry of National Security, and with PICA itself, about resourcing a mini PICA in New York,” Johnson Smith said Wednesday.

She was responding to a question from the Jamaica Observer during a post-Cabinet media briefing at the Montego Bay Convention Centre, where the third and final day of the 10th Biennial Jamaica Diaspora Conference was being held.

“Literally, this have been one of the issues that first came to my attention from 2016 and it has been something that we have been working on,” the minister added.

Johnson Smith explained that the relocation of the New York Consulate to 300 East 42nd Street is part of that plan. The new location is in a 40,000-square-foot space, compared to 23,000 square feet at the former address.

“The move that we’ve just made in New York to a larger space is actually to facilitate also what I call a mini PICA, because what happens is that we — the Ministry of Foreign Affairs staff — facilitate, in the consulate, PICA support. We have one or two PICA resources, but we also have to facilitate because the volumes are so high and that reduces the time that we’re able to spend on other consumer matters,” she explained.

“It is a labour of love and always carried out to the best of our abilities, but the volumes are just very high,” she added.

Johnson Smith noted that there has been an increase in the demand for passports by native Jamaicans living in the Diaspora.

“There is increased appetite among our Jamaicans overseas to get that passport; to get their children’s citizenship, and to get their children’s passports. And because many of them left before the machine-readable passports, they are unable to use the online facility. They have the old blue one [passport], the handwritten one, and really at this point because of security, and the [need for] elimination of fraud or other issues, the process for online application is still limited to adults who have a machine-readable passport that has expired,” she disclosed.

Johnson Smith heaped praise on the team in New York, led by Consul General Alsion Wilson for the work they have done in coping with these increased demands.

“New York used to be the most complained about mission historically, and the complaint levels have fallen. The praise levels have grown and the new space and the new resourcing we think, with this reconfiguration, will help even better to serve our population. It’s much closer to the subway as well, so more people are able to come,” she said.

Speaking during a plenary on Monday, Wilson 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. She also made a call for PICA to provide additional staff to handle the workload.