Raphael John-Lall

raphael.lall@guardian.co.tt

Xeno­pho­bia, un­em­ploy­ment, and ex­ploita­tion have forced some of the mi­grants who sought refuge in T&T to re­turn to Venezuela.

That is the view of ex­perts on the mi­grant sit­u­a­tion, in­clud­ing Hon­orary Se­nior Fel­low at the In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions, Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI),  Dr An­tho­ny Gon­salves who said many of them sim­ply got on a boat and re­turned home be­cause of the dif­fi­cul­ties they en­coun­tered here.

“A lot of them lost their jobs here. Re­mem­ber, many busi­ness­es closed such as the re­tail sec­tor and bars, so those Venezue­lans have left on boats and have gone back. It’s just half an hour down the main,” he said

Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young ex­tend­ed the Venezue­lan re-reg­is­tra­tion process to last Fri­day, giv­ing mi­grants six ad­di­tion­al work­ing days to drop off com­plet­ed forms. The pre­lim­i­nary count of Venezue­lans who had ap­plied for re-reg­is­tra­tion as of March 26 was ap­prox­i­mate­ly 13,800. Two years ago, 16,000 Venezue­lans reg­is­tered to tem­porar­i­ly live and work in T&T.

Gon­salves said the fate of Venezue­lans in T&T de­pends on the po­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion in Venezuela.

“If the Venezue­lan econ­o­my tum­bles, there could be an­oth­er ma­jor flow to Trinidad and To­ba­go, then we would be in se­ri­ous trou­ble,” he said.

He said Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States Joe Biden has tak­en a less hard­line ap­proach to mi­gra­tion than his pre­de­ces­sor Don­ald Trump and it is pos­si­ble that se­cret ne­go­ti­a­tions might be tak­ing place with the Maduro regime.

“If you look at what Biden is do­ing, he is not chang­ing the Trump thing of­fi­cial­ly but at the same time, he is not im­ple­ment­ing it. Biden is not do­ing any­thing to stop the tankers go­ing to Venezuela and Maduro has start­ed to im­ple­ment changes such as open­ing up the coun­try to for­eign in­vest­ment,” Gon­salves said.

Harsh con­di­tions in T&T

Ang­ie Ram­nar­ine, who heads La Ro­maine’s Mi­grant Cen­tre, agrees with the view that few­er Venezue­lans are reg­is­ter­ing this time around be­cause they have re­turned home.

“They have re­turned to Venezuela for a num­ber of rea­sons, in­clud­ing to use it as a gate­way to oth­er Latin Amer­i­can coun­tries. Re­mem­ber, Colom­bia made over 1 mil­lion per­sons le­gal for ten years. Oth­er Latin Amer­i­can coun­tries are mak­ing it more at­trac­tive for Venezue­lans. In oth­er coun­tries, the process for Venezue­lans is quick­er and not as painful and de­hu­man­is­ing as it is here. Oth­er Latin Amer­i­can coun­tries are step­ping up to the plate in try­ing to ac­com­mo­date Venezue­lans,” she said.

She said many of the mi­grants that sought refuge in T&T are high­ly skilled and ed­u­cat­ed and oth­er Latin Amer­i­can coun­tries are mak­ing use of their skills. How­ev­er, she be­lieves T&T’s au­thor­i­ties have adopt­ed a dif­fer­ent stance.

“They have crim­i­nalised all refugees. Even if you are reg­is­ter­ing some of them, what were the short term, medi­um, and long term plan for reg­is­ter­ing them? Are we go­ing to be in­def­i­nite­ly ex­tend­ing their stay here?” Ram­nar­ine asked.

She added that lo­cal au­thor­i­ties are look­ing at Venezue­lan mi­gra­tion through the lens of hu­man traf­fick­ing.

“Yes, hu­man traf­fick­ing is big busi­ness but there are fam­i­lies gen­uine­ly look­ing for a bet­ter way of life.”

Venezue­lan ac­tivist Sofia Figuera com­ment­ed: “There are a num­ber of rea­sons why some left. Some found the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ei­ther be re­lo­cat­ed through the Unit­ed Na­tions High Com­mis­sion­er for Refugees (UN­HCR) and oth­ers left for the US, Cana­da, Aus­tralia, and/or Eu­rope.

“Oth­ers re­turned home due to the lack of op­por­tu­ni­ties lo­cal­ly due to COVID-19, oth­ers left dis­ap­point­ed at the xeno­pho­bia and mur­ders,” she said.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly the xeno­pho­bia will not go away any time soon, as we are on­ly reg­is­ter­ing those that were al­ready reg­is­tered. As I’ve al­ways said and will re­peat, as long as there is a Com­mu­nist Pres­i­dent in Venezuela that en­rich­es him­self and his cronies while the rest of the Venezue­lan na­tion has to fight for food, med­ica­tions, wa­ter, elec­tric­i­ty, and over­all se­cu­ri­ty, there will con­tin­ue to be mi­grants/ refugees, not on­ly flee­ing in­to Trinidad but to neigh­bour­ing coun­tries.”

Figuera con­clud­ed: “The fact of the mat­ter re­mains that we will move in­to the fu­ture with 13,000 and more reg­is­tered mi­grants and a num­ber of them will re­main il­le­gal and un­reg­is­tered. Some of these men and women are par­ents to Trinida­di­an chil­dren. The process needs to be more strin­gent, es­pe­cial­ly the back­ground checks.”

Source: – Trinidad Guardian