Immigration Set To Handle All Procedures Promptly
Administrative procedures in the Immigration Department at the Philipsburg police station in St.Maarten are in order and the intention is to ensure that all procedures are handled expeditiously. At present, the department deals with requests for residence permits, renewal of residence permits and re-entry permits. While re-entry permits are requested at the Philipsburg police station, requests for residence permits and renewal of residence permits for St.Maarten are submitted first to the Police Affairs Department upstairs in the Sun Colour Building.
Those requests are then processed and sent to the Police Immigration Department in the police station for advice. Re-entry permits are requested at the Immigration Office at the police station in Philipsburg. The standard procedure now is that a request is submitted to Interpol for a background investigation of the person requesting the residence permit. Once that information is received from Interpol, the Lt. Governor as Local Chief of Police is given an advice by Police Immigration.
Chief of Immigration Police Commissioner Ademar Doran said this period depended strictly on the length of time it took for information to be retrieved from the country of origin of the person for whom the residence permit was being requested. When the advice is given to the Lt. Governor he sends the request back to Police Immigration for final issuance.
At this stage the person making the request should have proof of payment of all applicable fees to the Federal Receiver's Office.
The guarantor for the intended resident will then have to sign documents to this effect at the Police Immigration Department , at which point a landing permit is issued that should be sent to the person who is being admitted into the island of St.Maarten. Doran said it must be made clear that a person being admitted into the island for the first time should not be on the island while his or her permit request was being processed. Doran said that in general, once those persons who had been admitted landed on the island of St.Maarten and received their residence permits, they were free to travel to and from the island without requiring re-entry permits.
He said requests for renewal of residence permits must be submitted three months before the permits expired. In general, he said, "This process should go much faster," as there is no need to request information from abroad. The renewal request also is submitted to the Ponce Affairs Department in the Sun Colour Building, where it will be verified whether the person who has been admitted has maintained the same status. Doran said the police would then ensure that the person had not committed a crime while on the island, and then would send an advice to the Lt. Governor as Local Chief of Police, who would send the approval back to the Police Immigration Department of St.Maarten for issuance.
Doran said the length of time a person would be allowed to reside on the island depended on the nature of the request. He also stated that the two conditions under which requests for residence permits were made were for unification with family members residing here and for employment.
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