Unending Venezuelan immigrant chaos

After years of hosting Venezuelan migrants, the government continues to mishandle their presence in the country.

The government issued 16,523 work permits in June 2019 to the population of Venezuelan migrants living in TT. Those permits were renewed three times during the 30 months of pandemic restrictions, but expire on December 31.

It expects 13,300 migrants to renew their documents, but appears to be operating in the dark, with little clarity about the status of those who have registered to work and indeed, if they are still in the country.

It has purposefully avoided any formal policy on the influx of Venezuelan migrants, declining to enable even basic support services, including health care and education through benign neglect.

The last effort at registering migrants was a scattershot exercise on March 2021, when just over 13,800 Venezuelans turned up.

Of those who applied for work permits in 2019, the International Organisation for Migration estimates that as many as 68 per cent lost their jobs because of employment restrictions during the pandemic.

It would not be a stretch to understand that over the last few months, working migrants would have been striving to improve their ability to provide for their families.

They now face an entirely avoidable procedural error in managing a document that enables them to work at all.

In an attempt to manage the situation, the Immigration Division began using a two-week stamp on these documents, poor solace for desperate people who continue to hope for a better life. Long lines was the scene again at an immigration office in Port of Spain on Friday, and a repeat is expected on Monday.

International estimates of Venezuelan migrant presence in TT place the actual number at between 60,000 and 40,000, depending on the source.

But nobody knows for sure, because this migrant community has been forced into an underclass in TT society, vulnerable to exploitation, with little sanction beyond the Prime Minister's offer to assist through "goodwill."

The government has made no effort at an accurate count of Venezuelan migrants present in the country and the number of undocumented migrants is determinedly kept opaque through inaction.

Dr Rowley engaged in a war of words with the Organisation of American States in November 2020 over the migrant issue, arguing that the country had worked to meet its obligations as a UN member.

By September 2020, there were 14,241 asylum claims and 2,514 recognised refugees lodged in TT.

The lack of a formal policy on Venezuelan migrants is now being compounded by the clumsy mishandling of a simple document that enables legal work. Migrants are losing their jobs for want of this basic authorisation.

In a vacuum of directive, a tacit understanding seems to have evolved that migrants can be frustrated, ignored and generally mistreated through bureaucracy.