RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

It’s been a lit­tle more than a year since Venezue­lan mi­grants were reg­is­tered al­low­ing them to live and work in Trinidad & To­ba­go.

But now that the year has passed, some mi­grants are call­ing for an ex­ten­sion say­ing the con­di­tions in their home­land have not im­proved.

Some said the COVID-19 lock­down had left them job­less and bereft of sav­ings, all of which went to pay ex­or­bi­tant rents and aid for their fam­i­lies still liv­ing in Venezue­lan.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Venezue­lan Judge Manuel Romero said his ID card has ex­pired and he was wor­ried about the fu­ture.

He said when the reg­is­tra­tion took place, his daugh­ter was 17 but now that she turned 18, she is now con­sid­ered an adult. He said she has not been work­ing and can­not get a job let­ter need­ed to get a six-month ex­ten­sion.

Romero ex­pressed grat­i­tude to the Trinida­di­an peo­ple who helped him this past two years as he moved from job to job, work­ing first as a fish­er­man, then a painter, a car­pen­ter, a grass cut­ter, a se­cu­ri­ty guard, a shop at­ten­dant and fi­nal­ly an ac­coun­tant.

His wife Lori­mar Sil­va who is an econ­o­mist pre­vi­ous­ly em­ployed with the Venezue­lan Mil­i­tary Uni­ver­si­ty has been work­ing two days for the week. Romero said while he has made a good life for him­self, many oth­er mi­grants were suf­fer­ing.

He said in Venezuela, the eco­nom­ic con­di­tions had wors­ened.

“If you have fam­i­ly out­side of Venezuela and they send mon­ey for you, then you will sur­vive but if you have no­body, you can get noth­ing and you will not sur­vive,” he said.

He al­so said the coun­try was so dan­ger­ous that you could not walk freely down the street with gods, with­out be­ing robbed. With no gas avail­able, Romero said many peo­ple had no ac­cess to food and med­i­cine.

Mean­while, di­rec­tor at the La Ro­maine Mi­grant Sup­port Group (LARMS) Ang­ie Ram­nar­ine said the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty should con­sid­er ex­tend­ing the reg­is­tra­tion pol­i­cy for an­oth­er year.

She said when the mi­grants were reg­is­tered it took be­tween three months to six months to col­lect their cards. Some peo­ple were col­lect­ing cards even up to Jan­u­ary this year. Then in March, we had COVID-19 and many mi­grants could not find jobs.”

With­out job let­ters and valid ID, Ram­nar­ine said the mi­grants were now at a dis­ad­van­tage.

“I feel we should give them an­oth­er year in or­der to re­build them­selves and form a sound eco­nom­ic base. Many of them en­coun­tered a lot of dis­crim­i­na­tion as they set about earn­ing a liv­ing but em­ploy­ers are now show­ing deep sat­is­fac­tion for the Venezue­lan work­ers be­cause of the hard work they do,” Ram­nar­ine said.

Mean­while, Mon Sign­or Chris­t­ian Pereira who has been work­ing close­ly with the Venezue­lan mi­grants said he al­so felt there should be an ex­ten­sion as the con­di­tions in Venezuela had not im­proved.

“The sit­u­a­tion in their home­land has not changed for the bet­ter and we must take this in­to con­sid­er­a­tion,” Pereira said.

Sev­er­al at­tempts were made to con­tact Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young but calls went unan­swered.

In 2017, Rochelle Nakhid, co­or­di­na­tor of the non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion Liv­ing Wa­ters Foun­da­tion’s Min­istry for Mi­grants and Refugees said over 40,000 Venezue­lans were liv­ing in T&T.

How­ev­er, the gov­ern­ment reg­is­tered on­ly 16,523. On the last day of reg­is­tra­tion, hun­dreds of Venezue­lans were lined up at all three reg­is­tra­tion cen­tres. Many of them wept af­ter the reg­is­tra­tion doors closed. Calls were made for the reg­is­tra­tion to be ex­tend­ed but this was not done by the gov­ern­ment.

Since then thou­sands more mi­grants have en­tered T&T il­le­gal­ly and have start­ed build­ing their lives with the help of Good Samar­i­tans.