Richard Ra­moutar

Im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers work un­der the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty to pro­vide high qual­i­ty and non-dis­crim­i­na­to­ry im­mi­gra­tion con­trol, all of which is un­der­pinned by and ought to be in ac­cor­dance with sound pol­i­cy di­rec­tions, im­mi­gra­tion law, con­sti­tu­tion­al, ad­min­is­tra­tive and crim­i­nal law, in­ter­na­tion­al best prac­tices and Trinidad and To­ba­go's in­ter­na­tion­al oblig­a­tions and chang­ing dy­nam­ics of the glob­al econ­o­my. Some of the func­tions of im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers in­clude ex­am­i­na­tion of pass­ports, abil­i­ty to de­tect fraud­u­lent doc­u­men­ta­tion, writ­ing re­ports, con­duct­ing in­ter­views, de­cid­ing ad­mis­si­bil­i­ty of pas­sen­gers, re­fus­ing ad­mis­sion where nec­es­sary, car­ry­ing out in­tel­li­gence-based ac­tiv­i­ties, mak­ing arrange­ments for re­moval of the pro­hib­it­ed class, grant­i­ng ex­ten­sions and oth­er sim­i­lar de­ci­sion-mak­ing process­es in­volv­ing res­i­dence, cit­i­zen­ship and trav­el doc­u­ments and work per­mits.

Giv­en the chal­leng­ing and com­plex func­tions of this vi­tal com­po­nent of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, what, first­ly, are the cur­rent pro­ce­dures in or­der to be­come an im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cer? And sec­ond­ly, what needs to be changed to per­mit equal op­por­tu­ni­ty for all ter­tiary and post-sec­ondary school grad­u­ates de­sirous of work­ing with the de­part­ment and who can bring their va­ri­ety of skills to en­hance de­vel­op­ment of the Im­mi­gra­tion De­part­ment?

Ad­ver­tis­ing, re­cruit­ment and se­lec­tion process

In or­der to be­come an im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cer in Trinidad and To­ba­go, one has to be em­ployed in the pub­lic ser­vice at the cler­i­cal lev­el, and when there is a need for im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers, a cir­cu­lar mem­o­ran­dum is is­sued to all gov­ern­ment de­part­ments. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, for a lengthy pe­ri­od of time, the Im­mi­gra­tion De­part­ment of the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty has been a closed de­part­ment to the gen­er­al pub­lic, ex­cept on a few oc­ca­sions, when of­fi­cers from the Po­lice Ser­vice were trans­ferred and some came from out­side of the pub­lic ser­vice. It does ap­pear that there may have been some sort of arrange­ment be­tween the Pub­lic Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion, Ser­vice Com­mis­sions De­part­ment and oth­er pub­lic en­ti­ties. En­try lev­el po­si­tions for the Pris­ons Ser­vice, Po­lice Ser­vice, Army, Coast Guard, and even the For­eign Ser­vice are all ad­ver­tised pub­licly, so that there can be open com­pe­ti­tion in or­der to choose the most suit­ably-qual­i­fied ap­pli­cants.

The ques­tion may be posed: why has this closed-door pol­i­cy in the Im­mi­gra­tion De­part­ment pre­vailed so long in Trinidad and To­ba­go?

For the first time in its his­to­ry, the Im­mi­gra­tion De­part­ment ad­ver­tised the va­can­cy for Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fi­cer 1 na­tion­al­ly on Mon­day, 18 De­cem­ber, 2000, Page 54, in the Trinidad Ex­press, stat­ing the min­i­mum ex­pe­ri­ence and train­ing re­quire­ments need­ed for this po­si­tion. It is in­struc­tive to note that un­der the cap­tion of Min­i­mum Ex­pe­ri­ence and Train­ing Re­quire­ments for Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fi­cer 1, what was nec­es­sary was "some cler­i­cal ex­pe­ri­ence (six to 18 months), and train­ing, as ev­i­denced by a GCE O-Lev­el Cer­tifi­cate with pass­es in five sub­jects, two of which must be Eng­lish Lan­guage and math­e­mat­ics, and sup­ple­ment­ed by ev­i­dence of hav­ing suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed an in­duc­tion train­ing course for im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers." How­ev­er, af­ter 18 De­cem­ber, 2000, the gov­ern­ment re­vert­ed to a closed-door pol­i­cy ap­proach. The de­ci­sion to re­vert to a closed-door pol­i­cy is in­im­i­cal to the Con­sti­tu­tion and Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Act of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Con­sti­tu­tion­al equal­i­ty guar­an­tees

There is no valid ba­sis un­der the Con­sti­tu­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go to dis­re­gard the con­sti­tu­tion­al equal­i­ty guar­an­tees, as not­ed in sev­er­al Com­mon­wealth ju­ris­dic­tions and which state that "Every­one is equal be­fore the law and has the right to equal pro­tec­tion and ben­e­fit of the law," and a "state may not dis­crim­i­nate, di­rect­ly or in­di­rect­ly, by a fail­ure to make ad­just­ments against any­one on one or more grounds, or a com­bi­na­tion of grounds," and that "leg­is­la­tion must be en­act­ed to pre­vent or pro­hib­it dis­crim­i­na­tion by the State and pri­vate per­sons. "As such, the pas­sage of the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Act in Trinidad and To­ba­go is a very sig­nif­i­cant le­gal doc­u­ment. Even though the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Act was in its em­bry­on­ic stages around 2000, yet rep­re­sen­ta­tions made by this writer bore equal­i­ty fruit, so that all cit­i­zens of this twin-is­land re­pub­lic would have an op­por­tu­ni­ty to make an ap­pli­ca­tion to de­ter­mine their suit­abil­i­ty.

Hu­man re­source tal­ent avail­able for Im­mi­gra­tion De­part­ment

There is a grow­ing vol­ume of na­tion­als in so many fields as law, crim­i­nol­o­gy, so­ci­ol­o­gy, for­eign lan­guages, hu­man rights, pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion, in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions, com­put­er sci­ence, in­ter­na­tion­al trade and tourism that can blend in har­mo­nious­ly with the de­part­ment's do­mes­tic and in­ter­na­tion­al in­ter­ests. Thus, it be­comes quite dif­fi­cult to un­der­stand how long could a gov­ern­ment hu­man re­source agency and all those in­volved in the re­cruit­ment and se­lec­tion process be so in­sen­si­tive to grow­ing glob­al eco­nom­ic, transna­tion­al of­fend­ing, hu­man rights and oth­er need­ful ar­eas that re­quire these ex­per­tise and yet con­fined their search for the na­tion's best can­di­dates to on­ly pub­lic ser­vice ap­pli­cants? In do­ing so, it en­gages in forms of dis­crim­i­na­tion to so many qual­i­fied na­tion­als in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

It is im­per­a­tive to har­ness the na­tions' best re­sources of these in­di­vid­u­als who can bring their var­ied skills and learn­ing to make the de­part­ment and min­istry glob­al­ly com­pet­i­tive. More than ever be­fore, the Im­mi­gra­tion De­part­ment is the na­tion's first line of de­fence against crim­i­nals, smug­glers, il­le­gal mi­grants and hu­man traf­fick­ers. There­fore, pro­tect­ing the pub­lic lies and com­bat­ing bor­der and im­mi­gra­tion crime is al­so a core part of that role.

Im­mi­gra­tion re­cruit­ment of the UK, USA, Cana­da, New Zealand, Aus­tralia, Kenya, Fi­ji and Samoa.

Giv­en the prin­ci­ples and man­date of Vi­sion 2020, it is quite clear that the steps tak­en by the Ser­vice Com­mis­sions De­part­ment and along with the im­mi­gra­tion arm of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty are a ret­ro­grade move.

How­ev­er, if we as a na­tion are look­ing to progress and pro­vide equal­i­ty treat­ment, sound ex­am­ples can be pat­terned af­ter re­view­ing the re­cruit­ment and se­lec­tion pro­ce­dures in the UK, USA, Cana­da, Aus­tralia, Kenya, Fi­ji, and Samoa. In these coun­tries, all im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers' po­si­tions are ad­ver­tised na­tion­al­ly and year-round. Trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty are ev­i­denced in the ad­ver­tise­ments placed in these coun­tries. It is sug­gest­ed that the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go mod­i­fy its ap­proach and rem­e­dy this de­fi­cien­cy, as it may not be too long be­fore glar­ing is­sues are brought to the fore by the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Act.