When Em­ma was at school in Venezuela she was top of her class.

She came first in ex­ams reg­u­lar­ly and won sev­er­al awards.

Em­ma was al­ways a quick learn­er who loved to go to school.

She hoped to be­come a med­ical doc­tor like her ma­ter­nal grand­fa­ther.

And there was no doubt in the fam­i­ly's mind that she would have achieved that.

But now the sev­en-year-old is not able to prop­er­ly show ex­act­ly how in­tel­li­gent she is.

Em­ma and her moth­er Maria both fled their fam­i­ly's home at Cumana in the Su­cre State in Venezuela to come to T&T two years ago, to es­cape the on­go­ing cri­sis there.

At the time, Maria made the de­ci­sion to flee her home, res­i­dents of the area had be­gun loot­ing su­per­mar­kets to get food to be able to eat.

Maria and Em­ma are now asy­lum seek­ers in this coun­try.

An asy­lum seek­er is a sta­tus giv­en to some­one still await­ing the process of be­ing recog­nised as a refugee.

Ac­cord­ing to the Unit­ed Na­tions High Com­mis­sion­er for Refugees (UN­HCR), a refugee is "a per­son who has fled their coun­try of ori­gin and is un­able or un­will­ing to re­turn be­cause of a well-found­ed fear of be­ing per­se­cut­ed be­cause of their race, re­li­gion, na­tion­al­i­ty, mem­ber­ship of a par­tic­u­lar so­cial group or po­lit­i­cal opin­ion".

Maria be­lieves she fits that de­f­i­n­i­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to 2017 sta­tis­tics, T&T is the third most pop­u­lar coun­try for asy­lum seek­ers in the re­gion.

As of May 2017, there were 336 ap­pli­ca­tions for asy­lum in this coun­try.

In 2016 there were 163 asy­lum ap­pli­ca­tions with Venezue­lans ac­count­ing for the sec­ond largest num­ber of asy­lum seek­ers here.

By the end of 2018, there was a 367 per cent in­crease from the fig­ure at the end of 2017. The ma­jor­i­ty were Venezue­lans.

Be­cause of their sta­tus, asy­lum seek­ers like Em­ma are not able to at­tend school here.

For­eign-born chil­dren of asy­lum-seek­ers and refugees face dif­fi­cul­ties en­ter­ing the pub­lic school sys­tem in this coun­try, Maria said.

Be­cause of im­mi­gra­tion reg­u­la­tions re­quir­ing a stu­dent per­mit, pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion is typ­i­cal­ly not avail­able to asy­lum seek­ers in T&T.

Some pri­vate ed­u­ca­tion in­sti­tu­tions may ac­cept stu­dents, how­ev­er, the ex­or­bi­tant costs usu­al­ly at­tached to them are a de­ter­rent.

Asy­lum seek­ers are al­so not al­lowed to legal­ly work here.

"If I had the mon­ey to do send her to pri­vate school I would have be­cause I know here po­ten­tial," Maria said.

As a sort of stop­gap mea­sure the Liv­ing Wa­ters Com­mu­ni­ty, how­ev­er, of­fers ba­sic class­es four days a week to help the chil­dren.

It is not cer­ti­fied by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion.

While Maria is grate­ful for this she wish­es Em­ma could be chal­lenged in school, and be al­lowed to so­cialise and help her with her Eng­lish.

Maria feels Em­ma is caught in a kind of lim­bo here.

"It is frus­trat­ing to know what she is ca­pa­ble of and that she is not be­ing able to achieve her full po­ten­tial," Maria said.

Maria said her de­ci­sion to come to T&T was to make a bet­ter life es­pe­cial­ly for Em­ma, but some­times she won­ders if she made the right de­ci­sion.

"I hope that they can do some­thing for the chil­dren be­cause what will hap­pen to them when they be­come adults," she said.