While in­ves­ti­ga­tions are be­ing con­duct­ed in­to the un­for­tu­nate en­counter be­tween a Venezue­lan ves­sel loaded with mi­grants and an in­ter­cep­tor from the T&T Coast Guard on Sat­ur­day night, it is un­seem­ly for politi­cians in this coun­try to get in­to a tit-for-tat over the is­sue.

Is­sues in­volv­ing the mi­grant cri­sis in the re­gion are po­lar­is­ing enough and it cer­tain­ly does not help that this coun­try’s two main po­lit­i­cal lead­ers are al­ready ar­riv­ing at cer­tain un­proven con­clu­sions about that trag­ic in­ci­dent.

First, there was the use of the word “mur­der” by Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar as she put a par­tic­u­lar spin on how Ya Elvis San­toyo Sara­bia died in the arms of his moth­er, Darielvis Sara­bia. In do­ing so, she ap­peared to be buy­ing in­to a nar­ra­tive al­ready be­ing spread by Venezuela’s op­po­si­tion and me­dia about what tran­spired on Sat­ur­day night in the Gulf of Paria.

And it cer­tain­ly did not help that Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley did not re­sist the urge to re­spond to his po­lit­i­cal ri­val. How­ev­er, his in­sis­tence that it was an ac­ci­dent draws a con­clu­sion not yet ar­rived at by the teams from the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) and the T&T Coast Guard (TTCG) in­ves­ti­gat­ing the in­ci­dent.

It is hard to see how ei­ther of these state­ments helps in re­solv­ing an ex­treme­ly sen­si­tive and trag­ic sit­u­a­tion. The wrong things said at the wrong time serve on­ly to in­flame the al­ready shaky so­cio-po­lit­i­cal re­la­tions be­tween T&T and Venezuela over this is­sue.

This coun­try’s ge­o­graph­ic lo­ca­tion puts us at the cen­tre of the largest record­ed refugee cri­sis in the Amer­i­c­as, so there is no way for this na­tion to stand aloof when the con­se­quences of this, one of the largest dis­place­ment crises in the world, oc­curs so fre­quent­ly with­in our ter­ri­to­r­i­al bound­aries.

In­stead of trad­ing barbs, our po­lit­i­cal lead­ers should be tak­ing se­ri­ous note of the fact that, ac­cord­ing to da­ta from the UN­HCR, peo­ple con­tin­ue to leave Venezuela at an av­er­age of 5,000 per day and some of them are head­ing our way.

By some es­ti­mates, be­tween six to 10 ves­sels leave dai­ly from north-east­ern Venezuela for T&T loaded with peo­ple flee­ing the po­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic tur­moil in that South Amer­i­can coun­try.

Our small twin is­lands have lim­it­ed ca­pac­i­ty to ac­com­mo­date the hun­dreds of refugees that are breach­ing our bor­ders. There­fore, our leg­is­la­tors and de­ci­sion-mak­ers need to make bet­ter use of their time and en­er­gy to find so­lu­tions to this on­go­ing dis­place­ment cri­sis.

Rather than rush­ing to cast blame when these mi­grant is­sues arise, some po­lit­i­cal in­flu­ence should be di­rect­ed at re­vers­ing xeno­pho­bia, ex­ploita­tion and abuse which is ram­pant on both sides of the Gulf of Paria.

Al­so, T&T stands in the shame­ful po­si­tion of be­ing a lead­ing re­cip­i­ent na­tion in the re­gion’s hu­man traf­fick­ing trade, yet traf­ficked and ex­ploit­ed women and girls are be­ing hid­den in plain sight at lo­ca­tions across this coun­try and not enough is be­ing done about that as­pect of our mi­grant prob­lem.

At­tempts to score po­lit­i­cal points do not help the vic­tims in this lat­est mi­grant tragedy or pre­vent oth­er in­ci­dents from tak­ing place. They are lit­tle more than un­nec­es­sary dis­trac­tions, hin­der­ing the search for jus­tice and truth.