Venezue­lans flee­ing the cri­sis in their home­land will be giv­en an amnesty to reg­is­ter legal­ly and pos­si­bly work for one year in T&T with­out any in­volve­ment from the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC).

So said Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young as he dis­missed con­cerns of vote-rig­ging raised by Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar yes­ter­day.

Speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence at the Moru­ga Po­lice Sta­tion, Young said the reg­is­tra­tion process will be­gin soon to doc­u­ment and reg­is­ter all Venezue­lan na­tion­als here, once it re­ceives clear­ance from Cab­i­net.

“This reg­is­tra­tion process is sim­ply to get the cor­rect da­ta of the num­ber of Venezue­lans who were stay­ing legal­ly and il­le­gal­ly in T&T. Right now you are hear­ing all sorts of ir­re­spon­si­ble fig­ures be­ing bandied about, so for the first time we will get the re­al fig­ures,” Young said.

He chas­tised Per­sad-Bisses­sar for her claims, say­ing, “The EBC is not go­ing to be play­ing any part of the ex­er­cise. It will be com­plete­ly dri­ven by the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty. We will be de­sign­ing ID cards, not the EBC ID cards, so any at­tempt to try to con­fuse the two is very ir­re­spon­si­ble. I call it dog whistling.”

Asked to ex­plain fur­ther, Young said, “We will look at util­is­ing some­thing like your dri­vers’ per­mit and work­ing along with maybe the Min­istry of Works to see how they do the reg­is­tra­tion process. We will be giv­ing all Venezue­lans a pe­ri­od of time to come to cer­tain of­fices, places, all the var­i­ous op­tions. We want you to come and reg­is­ter and walk with your own ID, pass­ports and we will reg­is­ter every­one.”

He urged all Venezue­lans here to take ad­van­tage of the op­por­tu­ni­ty to reg­is­ter dur­ing this process.

“I want to say that all Venezue­lans who are here legal­ly or il­le­gal­ly, we are giv­ing you a time to reg­is­ter and there­after the law will ap­ply, “ Young said.

Asked whether the il­le­gal Venezue­lans will be per­se­cut­ed if they came for­ward, Young said no.

“This is amnesty. I want to know who is here and the on­ly way to do that is to lit­er­al­ly grant an amnesty, which the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty can do be­cause im­mi­gra­tion de­ci­sions are tak­en by the min­istry with­in the con­fines of the law.

“So yes, I am ask­ing them to come and reg­is­ter. It is not come and reg­is­ter and I will hold you and take you to the de­ten­tion cen­tre. No, come and reg­is­ter and this pro­vides a clean slate for every­one who comes and reg­is­ter. There­after we will ap­ply the law.”

Young could not say whether reg­is­tra­tion will give ac­cess to health and ed­u­ca­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties for Venezue­lans who are flee­ing their home­land in droves be­cause of the so­cio-eco­nom­ic cri­sis.

“All of those things are to be de­cid­ed by Cab­i­net, es­pe­cial­ly the ed­u­ca­tion as­pect,” Young said.

For those Venezue­lans who fail to come for­ward, Young said they will feel the full brunt of the law.

“If you can’t pro­duce a reg­is­tra­tion card then it means you are il­le­gal and you can be sent to the de­ten­tion cen­tre and be de­port­ed. This is an op­por­tu­ni­ty for you to get in­to the sys­tem and utilise the sys­tem of reg­is­ter­ing, know­ing that you are not go­ing to be pros­e­cut­ed,” he said.

He al­so said a col­lab­o­ra­tive crime ini­tia­tive was in place to pull back on il­le­gal en­try by im­mi­grants. This in­cludes more coastal pa­trols and land sur­veil­lance, Young said.