The Apostleship of the Sea of the United States is working to improve potentially dangerous and often unnecessary restrictions on mariners’ shore-leave rights.Fr. Sinclair Oubre—president of the Apostleship of the Sea and an active SIU member—recently met with representatives of Congress, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the labor movement in Washington, D.C. to advance the cause. He also conferred with SIU President Michael Sacco.
The organization is urging Congress to begin ratifying International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention 185 “in the most expedient manner possible so that seafarers do not become the latest victims of terrorism.”
Unanimously ratified (392-0) last year by delegates to the ILO forum in Geneva, Convention 185 calls for a universal mariner identification document. It also states the critical need for shore leave and further specifies that “seafarers shall not be required to hold a visa.” Convention 185 also indicates that “any member (nation) which is not in a position to fully implement this requirement shall ensure that its laws and regulations or practice provide arrangements that are substantially equivalent.”
For now, however, all mariners must possess “D-1” (non-immigration) visas to go ashore in the U.S. “After September 11, 2001, the Immigration and Naturalization Service ceased issuing crew list visas,” explained Oubre. “It also changed its rules regarding the INS agent issuing waivers for mariners to go ashore if they did not have a D-1 visa. The new regulations only allow a supervisor to waive the D-1 visa requirement and, unlike the airline industry, have no avenue for appeal.”
One consequence is that mariners have been denied shore-side medical care because they lack visas. “They can’t get off the ship unless it’s a life-threatening condition,” Oubre noted. “This has led to mariners sailing from U.S. ports on voyages that are weeks long without necessary health care. We can only hope that by the time the vessel reached its next port, the situation did not evolve into a life-threatening problem.”
Another concern is that such instances may lead to U.S. mariners unjustly being denied leave overseas.
“The bottom line is we don’t see the relationship between the D-1 visa and security,” Oubre said. “Our present policies assume that the greatest threat to maritime security comes from mariners leaving the vessels. However, the real threat is a terrorist posing as a mariner and staying on the vessel. He or she could blow up the ship at dock or scuttle it at an important waterway junction. Preventing the seafarer from leaving the vessel because the mariner lacks a visa will not prevent either of these security concerns.”
In a recent letter outlining the situation, the Apostleship of the Sea asks Congress to enact Convention 185 on seafarer documents “and let these new documents be accepted as identification for the mariner, and in place of the D-1 visa.”
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