Hello, fellow flyers. The topic of this thread can be simplified to "How much do you trust Timatic?" question. There are two citizens of Latvia intending to visit Turks and Caicos soon (purpose of visit is tourism and length of stay is about a week) , and as much as I traveled before, this is about the first time when I'm getting so much contradictory information about visa/entry requirements to a particular country.
The only decent official T&C website that I found is
http://www.immigrationboard.tc/go/en...nts--page.html, which doesn't list Latvia as a country whose nationals do not require a visa to enter T&C. Most of other non-official websites (like
http://www.worldtravelguide.net/coun...s-Islands.html) say that all citizens of EU countries do not require a visa, and so does Wikipedia (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_re...tvian_citizens) stating that visits up to 30 days do not require a visa, proving this point with a link to Timatic (
http://www.timaticweb.com/cgi-bin/ti...subuser=KLMB2C).
It was only logical that I decided to call Turks and Caicos Immigration department and talk to them. I called them twice on different days and talked to different officers - one of them confirmed that we don't need visas and another one told that we would need T&C visas unless we have United States visas (everyone possessing US visas can visit T&C), which we DO have, so it's kind of a positive answer too, but it's still confusing how two officers told two different things. Now, I understand that Latvia is a small country most people don't know about, but I would expect immigration officers to know their own rules quite well.
So in one corner of the ring is:
- immigration officer stating that we don't need visas as such
- Timatic
- Wikipedia and most unofficial websites
In the opposite corner is
- another immigration officer stating that we would need visas unless we have US visas
- immigrationboard.tc website (which may be outdated)
Which of the sides would you trust if you were me? And what would you do to make sure you don't get refused entry (apart from getting some decent country's citizenship
) ?