“If we send the mes­sage across the chan­nel to Venezuela that you are free to come to Trinidad by the thou­sands be­cause the laws of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the courts of Trinidad and To­ba­go will pro­tect you, what you think is go­ing to hap­pen?” It’s a ques­tion put out by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to the cit­i­zen­ry yes­ter­day.

As cit­i­zens, we need to con­sid­er whether we re­al­ly want to open our­selves to a flood of mi­grants at a time when the coun­try is hard-pressed enough to meet the needs of its own cit­i­zens.

The frank talk from PM Row­ley on the trou­bling Venezue­lan mi­grant is­sue comes amid a le­gal bat­tle for the state to stay its hands on de­por­ta­tions. Caught in the mid­dle are a num­ber of chil­dren who have lit­tle say in their fu­tures.

What is even more alarm­ing, as Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad not­ed, is that those who claim to care for these chil­dren do not see the dan­ger in putting them on pirogues for the jour­ney to T&T.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad, known for his frank speech, was clear that the state had the right to de­port il­le­gal mi­grants. The Prime Min­is­ter al­so re­mind­ed cit­i­zens that this coun­try did not have re­stric­tions on Venezuela un­til re­cent­ly, be­cause of the po­ten­tial of be­ing swamped by large num­bers of peo­ple that would cre­ate big­ger prob­lems we have not even thought about.

The is­sue of mi­grants is not an easy one for any coun­try and na­tions far big­ger than T&T with far more re­sources face sim­i­lar is­sues.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad, in his judge­ment in a case in­volv­ing an 11-year-old Venezue­lan, said it was the Gov­ern­ment’s right to change its pol­i­cy due to pre­vail­ing cir­cum­stances, in­clud­ing the pan­dem­ic. Fur­ther, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad not­ed that the 2014 Draft Pol­i­cy on Refugees and Asy­lum Seek­ers, which is be­ing used in ar­gu­ments by lawyers for the mi­grants, was ap­proved by Cab­i­net but not Par­lia­ment.

A change in the pol­i­cy was not “ir­reg­u­lar or un­rea­son­able,” Jus­tice Seep­er­sad ar­gued, al­though he not­ed the way in which the state sent mi­grants back was enough to make those re­spon­si­ble “hang their heads in shame” and it should not hap­pen again.

But this rul­ing is just one and there oth­er cas­es be­fore the courts.

How­ev­er, it is clear is T&T can­not con­tin­ue to open its doors to those who can eas­i­ly make the sev­en-mile jour­ney by sea to get here in the hope they would in­te­grate them­selves in­to the so­ci­ety.

Not­ing that there is a “brazen and bold dis­re­gard for the im­mi­gra­tion laws of this Re­pub­lic” by those who put life and limb at risk to en­ter the coun­try, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad al­so of­fered, “There are many cit­i­zens in this Re­pub­lic who are faced with dif­fi­cult eco­nom­ic cir­cum­stances and they too may wish to go to an­oth­er coun­try where the eco­nom­ic prospects are brighter, but these cit­i­zens should not be en­ti­tled to be refugees or asy­lum seek­ers seek­ing sta­tus un­der the 1951 Con­ven­tion.”

That, quite frankly, is some­thing we all should think about.