How backing V'zuelan migrants is in our selfish interest

In this November 24 photo, Venezuelans, mainly women and children, come ashore at Los Iros, south Trinidad. - Lincoln Holder
In this November 24 photo, Venezuelans, mainly women and children, come ashore at Los Iros, south Trinidad. - Lincoln Holder

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Venezuelan advocates have shot themselves in the foot trying to appeal to people’s humanitarian instincts. By doing so they have walked into a trap that their opponents have been only too happy to set.

Anyone who does not first tackle this issue from a perspective of national self-interest will continue to open themselves to charges of being unrealistic, out-of-touch people who want the government to fork out large sums to bring in migrants during a pandemic, while our own citizens are trapped outside.

Anyone supporting Venezuelan migrants, and refugees in general (and I include myself amongst them), will undermine their credibility unless we first acknowledge that we are in a public health crisis, and factor that into their position and recommendations. Otherwise we can and will open ourselves up to justified criticism.

I have consistently argued, not necessarily that we have an obligation to help all refugees, but that it is in the selfish interest of TT citizens and our government to welcome more migrants: to buy local goods and services, improve productivity, boost the number of bilingual people, support Latin American trade, and shore up our pension and national insurance services, sinking under the weight of an aging population.

More migrants create more jobs for locals and pay more taxes – it is as simple as that.

We cannot pretend, however, that covid19 has not changed the calculus. Migration brings costs too – and we must take into account an extra cost: paying for mass testing and state quarantine for all Venezuelan migrants.

So make them pay.

I therefore propose the following. We only allow Venezuelan migrants to enter to whom their government has denied travel documents (the Venezuelan government has denied passports to almost anyone without connections to the regime), and who pay upfront for their testing and quarantine on arrival. The total numbers should be limited by what the public health experts feel we can bear.

But what about our own citizens, suffering for the last year?

I agree with the Prime Minister – they should not be denied the rights afforded to others. They should be given the same option: any citizen can return if you pay for own testing (before and after arrival) and quarantine in a state-run facility.

Anyone who doesn’t arrive through those means should be summarily deported. We can buy a few cheaper, smaller, faster coast-guard vessels to interdict pirogues and supplement the large, expensive, slow (and largely inoperable) ships we have now.

Oh, and by the way – send people back to the mainland. Don’t drop women and children off on a desert island in the middle of the sea without food or water. Not a good look, guys.

The problem is that people are now mixing up two different issues: how we manage boatloads of new migrants, and how we treat with the Venezuelans already in TT are two totally different things.

Covid19 has changed not changed the fact that there are thousands of people on the ground now. How we deal with them in not a public health issue but a purely economic one.

In the last three years, since the Venezuelan crisis started in earnest, I have yet to see a single evidence-based paper on a negative economic impact of Venezuelan migrants. We continue to make decisions and recommendations without any ground-level evidence. I challenge anyone has evidence either way to present it – it can only be to the benefit of policymakers.

Venezuelans are paying rent, buying groceries, and spending money in local shops. Everyone talking about the the “burden” of migrants is focusing entirely on the supply side and totally forgetting the demand side. For every job a migrant “takes” from a local they are creating another through their spending and productivity improvements.

There are many Venezuelans who would like to start businesses – the engine of our economy. But who would invest or start a business if their registration period could run out in months?

Let’s get this straight, migrants are not here to collect welfare payments or rely on the State for anything (they can’t). A huge OECD paper looking at more than 30 countries over 50 years that shows that if they can stay for long enough to invest, work, and pay taxes, migrants actually increase government revenues and tax bases.

The maths is totally straightforward. Extend the registration period to three years: let them work, let them pay taxes and let their children go to school. Let a few in (along with our own people) with strict testing and quarantining at their own expense. In is in our national interest to do so.

Kiran Mathur Mohammed is a social entrepreneur, economist and businessman. He is a former banker, and a graduate of the University of Edinburgh

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"How backing V'zuelan migrants is in our selfish interest"

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