The Health So­cial Work­ers As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (HESWATT) has not­ed with grave con­cern the is­sue of eco­nom­ic mi­grants from Venezuela. Re­ports have point­ed to an in­crease in Venezue­lan na­tion­als ar­riv­ing on our shores.

We must not suc­cumb to the temp­ta­tion to view our clos­est South Amer­i­can neigh­bours as "bur­dens," which ap­pears to be the tone in cer­tain re­ports cir­cu­lat­ing in the me­dia, but rather we should seek to adopt a more hu­mane ap­proach, since as the say­ing goes: "To­day for you, to­mor­row for me."

A proac­tive ap­proach is re­quired, where­by the state ac­tive­ly part­ners with in­ter­na­tion­al agen­cies such as the UN­HCR, the Unit­ed Na­tions High Com­mis­sion for Refugees, lo­cal NGOs, and pro­fes­sion­al so­cial work agen­cies in an at­tempt to ef­fec­tive­ly lay the pol­i­cy ground­work for re­spond­ing in a sen­si­tive and car­ing man­ner to these peo­ple.

This will be crit­i­cal­ly need­ed in the event of mass mi­gra­tion to our shores, akin to the Syr­i­an sit­u­a­tion.When a coun­try re­ceives an in­flux of mi­grants who are eco­nom­i­cal­ly chal­lenged, mi­grant pro­tec­tion be­comes of crit­i­cal im­por­tance.

Of­ten, eco­nom­ic mi­grants are ex­posed to un­savoury prac­tices and face en­trap­ment in­to crim­i­nal net­works, through smug­gling, and sex­u­al ex­ploita­tion via hu­man traf­fick­ing.This is cur­rent­ly the case with Syr­i­an mi­grants in Turkey, who out of grave eco­nom­ic ne­ces­si­ty sell their bod­ies to lit­er­al­ly keep them­selves alive.

Such a sit­u­a­tion is not un­heard of in T&T, where hu­man traf­fick­ing is re­port­ed to be a thriv­ing af­fair and peo­ple laugh­ing­ly re­fer to the is­sue. These con­di­tions can prove harm­ful to mi­grants' phys­i­cal, emo­tion­al and men­tal health. Women and chil­dren in par­tic­u­lar, are at an in­creased risk.

HESWATT main­tains that we must not lose our hu­man­i­ty in re­spond­ing to peo­ple fac­ing such chal­leng­ing cir­cum­stances.Our char­ac­ter as a na­tion will be shown in the at­ti­tude we adopt and the ac­tion we take in re­sponse to this hu­man­i­tar­i­an cri­sis.

Will we act as preda­tors to im­pose greater hard­ships, or as car­ing hu­man be­ings who seek the wel­fare of peo­ple in need.

Michael Jat­tan

Pres­i­dent, HESWATT