By un­of­fi­cial es­ti­mates, there ap­prox­i­mate­ly 40,000 Venezue­lans cur­rent­ly liv­ing in T&T and they will be able to reg­is­ter with the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry through the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion to work here for a pe­ri­od of one year un­der a new amnesty arrange­ment.

Each in­di­vid­ual reg­is­tered will be is­sued an iden­ti­fi­ca­tion card and dur­ing the time they are work­ing here legal­ly, they will be en­ti­tled to ben­e­fits and will be in­clud­ed in the Board of In­land Rev­enue’s (BIR) Pay As You Earn (PAYE) sys­tem.

A ver­i­fi­ca­tion ex­er­cise will be car­ried out to en­sure that on­ly Venezue­lan na­tion­als are reg­is­tered.

This process, which will take place over a two-week pe­ri­od, is sep­a­rate from the sys­tem al­ready in place for those seek­ing asy­lum or refugee sta­tus.

How­ev­er, among the Venezue­lan com­mu­ni­ty in T&T, there is some dis­com­fort and un­cer­tain­ty over hav­ing to go through yet an­oth­er reg­is­tra­tion process. Among those ex­press­ing con­cern is lo­cal ac­tivist Sofia Figueroa-Leon, vice-pres­i­dent of the NGO Caribbean Kids and Fam­i­lies Ther­a­py Or­gan­i­sa­tion.

“The Venezue­lan com­mu­ni­ty is quite tak­en aback be­cause they reg­is­ter with the Liv­ing Wa­ter Com­mu­ni­ty and once you do, there is a reg­istry there. From there, Liv­ing Wa­ter will give you an ap­point­ment to go and reg­is­ter with the UN­HCR so that’s an­oth­er reg­istry. And as a refugee, you have to give up your pass­port and it is lodged at the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion,” she said.

“Why is it that you are cre­at­ing a fourth reg­is­tra­tion for?”

Figueroa-Leon added: “It is not clear what will hap­pen af­ter that first year as we have many peo­ple call­ing us and ask­ing what will hap­pen af­ter the year is up.”

She said of­fi­cials of the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty has so far been able to pro­vide an­swers, so refugees are fear­ful of be­ing sent back to Venezuela.

“Most of them come here flee­ing the sit­u­a­tion and look­ing to build their lives at least, so they can eat dai­ly. They are not look­ing for any­one to give them hous­ing or take them in. They just want the op­por­tu­ni­ty to do it for them­selves,” she said.

Figueroa-Leon said she is [par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cerned about the chil­dren of Venezue­lans win T&T.

“They are not get­ting an ed­u­ca­tion right now. What will hap­pen if these fam­i­lies can’t go any­where else or re­turn to Venezuela and de­cide to make this their home? Are we go­ing to have a whole bunch of il­lit­er­ate, ig­no­rant peo­ple in the next ten years?” she asked.

“If we change our out­look now, we can take ad­van­tage of the kinds of peo­ple who are com­ing here as we have doc­tors, nurs­es, mu­si­cians, ar­chi­tects…we can em­ploy them.”

Ac­cord­ing to Figueroa-Leon, the sit­u­a­tion for most asy­lum seek­ers is dire and there are many in­stances were uni­ver­si­ty ed­u­cat­ed Venezue­lans as forced to ac­cept low-pay­ing jobs as house-clean­ers, bar­tenders and even pack­ing gro­cery shelves.

Figueroa-Leon said dur­ing a vis­it to To­ba­go for Car­ni­val she was sur­prised at how many of her coun­try­men were sell­ing wa­ter, soft-drinks and Span­ish del­i­ca­cies on the road­side to make a liv­ing.

She stressed: “They are not ask­ing any­one for hand-outs, they are just try­ing to earn an hon­est liv­ing.”

Cur­rent fig­ures on the num­ber of Venezue­lan refugees in T&T is not avail­able but in March 2018, the Unit­ed Na­tions High Com­mis-

sion­er for Refugees (UN­HCR)re­port­ed a 2,000 per cent in­crease in the num­ber of Venezue­lan na­tion­als who had sought asy­lum world­wide since 2014, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the Amer­i­c­as. Ac­cord­ing to the UN­HCR, up to Jan­u­ary 31, there were 8,861 Venezue­lans in T&T.

More than 94,000 Venezue­lans were able to ac­cess refugee pro­ce­dures in oth­er coun­tries in 2017, the UN­HCR said but point­ed out: “Many more of those in need of pro­tec­tion opt for oth­er le­gal stay arrange­ments that may be faster to ob­tain and pro­vide the right to work, ac­cess to health and ed­u­ca­tion.”

The UN­HCR has re­leased guide­lines for gov­ern­ments to deal with peo­ple in need of in­ter­na­tion­al pro­tec­tion and hu­man­i­tar­i­an as­sis­tance and has en­cour­aged states to en­sure Venezue­lans have ac­cess to ter­ri­to­ry and refugee pro­ce­dures.

The agency has al­so urged gov­ern­ments to adopt prag­mat­ic pro­tec­tion-ori­ent­ed re­spons­es to the Venezue­lan peo­ple and sug­gest­ed al­ter­na­tive le­gal stay arrange­ments, in­clud­ing visas or tem­po­rary res­i­dence per­mits, as well as reg­u­lar­iza­tion pro­grammes guar­an­tee­ing ac­cess to health­care, ed­u­ca­tion, fam­i­ly uni­ty, free­dom of move­ment, shel­ter and the right to work.

An of­fi­cial of the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion, speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, said there were about 1,500 refugees and asy­lum seek­ers reg­is­tered in T&T and 13,000 Venezue­lans had been re­ferred to the UN­HCR. The di­vi­sion re­ceives be­tween 250 and 300 ap­pli­ca­tions per week.

While an asy­lum ap­pli­ca­tion is be­ing processed by the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion, an Or­der of Su­per­vi­sion is is­sued which al­lows the ap­pli­cant to move freely but which re­quires that they re­port to the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion once a month.

How­ev­er, fear­ful that they would be de­tained and de­port­ed, many Venezue­lans were not re­port­ing as they should and this is a ma­jor prob­lem, the of­fi­cial said.

Refugee arrange­ments

Latin Amer­i­ca has some of the world’s most pro­gres­sive refugee arrange­ments such as the Carta­ge­na De­c­la­ra­tion of 1984, which is built on the 1951 UN Refugee Con­ven­tion and em­bod­ies a wider refugee de­f­i­n­i­tion. The UN­HCR con­sid­ers that the broad cir­cum­stances lead­ing to the out­flow of Venezue­lan na­tion­als would fall with­in the spir­it of the Carta­ge­na De­c­la­ra­tion.

The Carta­ge­na De­c­la­ra­tion is a non-bind­ing re­gion­al in­stru­ment for the pro­tec­tion of refugees. It was adopt­ed by del­e­gates from ten Latin-Amer­i­can coun­tries, in­clud­ing Be­lize, Colom­bia, Cos­ta Ri­ca, El Sal­vador, Guatemala, Hon­duras, Mex­i­co, Nicaragua, Pana­ma and Venezuela and has been in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to the na­tion­al laws and state prac­tices of 14 coun­tries.

Its pro­vi­sions in­clude:

• Pro­tec­tion of and as­sis­tance to refugees, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the ar­eas of health, ed­u­ca­tion, labour and safe­ty.

• Es­tab­lish­ment of pro­grammes and projects to en­sure the self-suf­fi­cien­cy of refugees

• Train­ing of of­fi­cials re­spon­si­ble for the pro­tec­tion of and as­sis­tance to refugees, with the co-op­er­a­tion of UN­HCR and oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al agen­cies.

• En­sur­ing that re­ceiv­ing coun­tries fa­cil­i­tate, in co­or­di­na­tion with UN­HCR, the de­par­ture pro­ce­dure for refugees in in­stances of vol­un­tary and in­di­vid­ual repa­tri­a­tion.

• In­sti­tu­tion of ap­pro­pri­ate mea­sures in re­ceiv­ing coun­tries to pre­vent the par­tic­i­pa­tion of refugees in ac­tiv­i­ties di­rect­ed against the coun­try of ori­gin, while at all times re­spect­ing the hu­man rights of the refugees.