Can T&T af­ford to bear the costs of refugees and asy­lum seek­ers—pro­vid­ing them with hous­ing, ed­u­ca­tion and med­ical care—when there are 173,000 T&T cit­i­zens await­ing hous­ing?

Ac­cord­ing to At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi, that’s the ques­tion that has to be ex­am­ined with stake­hold­ers on the is­sue of refugees and asy­lum seek­ers.

Re­ply­ing to Op­po­si­tion ques­tions in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, he said a draft bill that seeks to deal with asy­lum for for­eign na­tion­als has been pre­pared and Gov­ern­ment is about to be­gin stake­hold­er talks on the is­sue.

“It’s a very com­plex mat­ter with se­ri­ous im­pli­ca­tions for the na­tion­al bud­get and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty. Plus the avail­abil­i­ty of Gov­ern­ment re­sources and ser­vices in Trinidad and To­ba­go for non-na­tion­als must be care­ful­ly be fac­tored and mea­sured...this sits di­rect­ly on the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the tax­pay­ers,” he said.

“The peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go will have to pro­vide ed­u­ca­tion, hous­ing and med­ical treat­ment to refugees and asy­lum seek­ers. That’s some­thing we have to con­sid­er as an im­por­tant thing—the ques­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go be­ing ready—is whether we can af­ford it right now and it’s a sig­nif­i­cant is­sue when we have 173,000 peo­ple on the hous­ing list cur­rent­ly”

The AG said his of­fice had not re­ceived any for­mal com­plaint from any in­ter­na­tion­al gov­ern­ment on Gov­ern­ment’s in­ter­pre­ta­tion of treaties on refugees. He said do­mes­tic law on this can on­ly be de­vel­oped af­ter treaties are rat­i­fied and T&T had not rat­i­fied the two treaties it has ac­ced­ed to on the is­sue.

He said Gov­ern­ment had sought da­ta on the num­ber of those who may be seek­ing asy­lum and ac­com­mo­da­tion He not­ed gen­er­al ac­com­mo­da­tion fig­ures have dropped over the years from 80 a year to 20 a year.

“The is­sue that must be fac­tored in for Trinidad and To­ba­go is how many peo­ple you will hold here, non-na­tion­als, ac­cess­ing state re­sources with pri­or­i­ty for ed­u­ca­tion, med­i­cines, hous­ing, in pri­or­i­ty to your cit­i­zens while mov­ing 20 peo­ple out over a year. That’s why it’s an ex­treme­ly com­pli­cat­ed is­sue as to what the coun­try, the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, is pre­pared to do in man­ag­ing this.”

Al-Rawi said any swift­ness to deal with the mat­ter “sits on the back” of how many peo­ple en­ter the sys­tem, how long they stay here and how many leave. He not­ed that the Unit­ed States has lim­it­ed the num­bers it ac­com­mo­dates. He said Gov­ern­ment is in close touch with the UN­HCR on the ex­ist­ing num­ber of asy­lum seek­ers/refugees and an­tic­i­pat­ed num­bers from oth­er coun­tries.