Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Des­per­ate­ly hun­gry but with their dig­ni­ty well in­tact, boat­loads of Venezue­lans are con­tin­u­ing to show up along the shores of the south­west­ern penin­su­la, with the hope of build­ing a bet­ter life in Trinidad.

Flee­ing the ter­ror of so­cial­ism, the for­eign­ers come in search of ba­sic goods such as ba­by di­a­pers, tooth­paste, toi­let pa­per and milk.

Da­ta ob­tained from the Ce­dros Coast Guard base show more than 38 for­eign­ers come to Trinidad every day and 98 per cent of these re­turn to their home­land.

How­ev­er, Ce­dros res­i­dents say many more come to Trinidad through il­le­gal chan­nels de­spite fre­quent pa­trols by the T&T Coast Guard, the Air Guard, Cus­toms and the Im­mi­gra­tion de­part­ment.

Since Venezuela's in­fla­tion rate jumped to triple-dig­it fig­ures and crime lev­els es­ca­lat­ed be­cause of wide­spread star­va­tion, le­gal ar­rivals from Venezuela to Trinidad have al­so in­creased.

Be­tween 2013 and 2014, ar­rivals grew from 15,008 to 21,052.

When the Guardian vis­it­ed the Ce­dros port on Wednes­day, more than 150 Venezue­lans were seen wait­ing to board a fer­ry which works from Tu­cu­pi­ta to Ce­dros twice per week.

Al­ber­to, from Bo­ca de Guer­ra, said he hoped to find a bet­ter life in Trinidad.

"I am go­ing home af­ter spend­ing two months in Trinidad. I did some con­struc­tion work while I was here but now my time is up so I have to go back home," Al­ber­to said.

Show­ing a pho­to­graph of his six-year-old daugh­ter, Al­ber­to said he did not even know whether his fam­i­ly had food. "Here in Trinidad you have every­thing, but in Venezuela we have noth­ing. Even if you have mon­ey you can­not buy food.

You have to wait in long lines and when you reach up they say it fin­ish and you have to wait for an­oth­er week to get," Al­ber­to said.

Shirley Ram­nar­ine, who was born in Guyana and moved to Venezuela more than 32 years ago, said she too hoped to find a bet­ter life in Trinidad.

"I can take care of old peo­ple. I am not lazy, I can work," she said, smil­ing. She added, "We can­not live in Venezuela any­more. We want to be in a place where we do not have to wor­ry about food."

She ex­plained that she and her fam­i­ly took a trip to Pana­ma hop­ing that they could start a new life there but the cost of ob­tain­ing le­gal doc­u­ments was too high.

"It would cost us US$4,000 to get every­thing. Pana­ma is a nice place but where we get­ting mon­ey to pay for the doc­u­ments.

We want to stay in Trinidad but we want to do so legal­ly so we don't have to hide," she said with a thick Guyanese ac­cent.

Help­ing out

Carl Ramd­hanie, who re­cruits Venezue­lans to work in Trinidad, said it was not true that Venezue­lans were tak­ing away jobs from lo­cals.

"We have to help one an­oth­er. We are hir­ing both lo­cals and Venezue­lans. They are re­al­ly suf­fer­ing be­cause things are not good in Venezuela and as hu­mans we have to help them," Ramd­hanie said.

A fish­er­man, who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty, said some Venezue­lan women are be­ing sex­u­al­ly ex­ploit­ed. "It is sad to see Tri­ni men us­ing these women as pros­ti­tutes.

They giv­ing them­selves cheap, as low as $100. Some are do­ing bad things just for a plate­ful of food," the man said.

He added that Venezue­lans are com­ing il­le­gal­ly through Granville, Fullar­ton and Ica­cos.

He said uthor­i­ties was giv­ing per­mis­sion to the for­eign­ers to stay two and three months in T&T.

"They should be giv­en a max­i­mum stay of two weeks. Why should they get three months? They are com­ing here and work­ing for the three months, mak­ing con­nec­tions and then go­ing back. They change all their mon­ey in­to US and take it back to Venezuela," the source added.

He al­so said the for­eign­ers were bring­ing stuff to sell in­clud­ing ham­mocks, clothes and jew­el­ry.

"Dur­ing Car­ni­val they set up stalls right on the shore and some of them are now get­ting work in To­ba­go," the source added.

Many res­i­dents from Ce­dros said they too have been ex­tend­ing as­sis­tance to the for­eign­ers.

Shop own­er Bert Be­har­ry said on any giv­en night, Venezue­lans could be seen sit­ting on the bench­es at the coast­line. "They oc­cu­py every pub­lic place you can think of.

They do not beg but if you give them some­thing to eat, they are very grate­ful," Be­har­ry said.

He added that many of the Venezue­lans who come to Ce­dros "do not stick around."

"They come here with con­nec­tions and agents from out­side of Ce­dros pick them up.

Some of them do not have mon­ey to pay for lodg­ing so we open our homes to them un­til they could find their way around," Be­har­ry said.

"You can see the des­per­a­tion in their faces but they don't milk you. They don't mis­be­have and we have nev­er had any re­port of any one of us be­ing robbed by a Venezue­lan."

How­ev­er, an­oth­er res­i­dent Sher­ry Ali said she was con­cerned that the for­eign­ers may bring dis­eases to lo­cals. "We know that Venezuela has Zi­ka, malar­ia and ChikV. Who is screen­ing them when they come here? We al­ready have a lot of peo­ple who do not have jobs here," Ali said.

VES­SELS IN­TER­CEPT­ED DAI­LY–COAST GUARD

?Con­tact­ed on Fri­day, Lt Com­man­der of the T&T Coast Guard Kirk Jean-Bap­tiste said many ves­sels oc­cu­pied by for­eign­ers are in­ter­cept­ed on a dai­ly ba­sis.

"It is not on­ly Venezue­lans who come to Trinidad with­out prop­er pa­pers.

Peo­ple come from up the is­lands, too," Jean-Bap­tiste said. He not­ed, how­ev­er, that when the CG in­ter­cepts a ves­sel and peo­ple on board can­not pro­duce their doc­u­ments, they are tak­en to the Ce­dros port to be in­ter­ro­gat­ed by Cus­toms of­fi­cers.

"We hand them over to Cus­toms to process and they de­cide their le­gal­i­ty," Jean-Bap­tiste added. He al­so not­ed that there are Venezue­lans who are le­git­i­mate traders who have been do­ing busi­ness in T&T years be­fore the coun­try start­ed to ex­pe­ri­ence eco­nom­ic col­lapse.