Raphael John-Lall

Econ­o­mist and re­tired di­rec­tor of the In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions, Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) Dr An­tho­ny Gon­za­les be­lieves that Venezue­lan mi­grants have made and can con­tin­ue to make an eco­nom­ic con­tri­bu­tion to T&T. How­ev­er he is not sure whether Venezue­lan mi­grants would be will­ing to stay in T&T and work legal­ly.

“The prob­lem is that many if not most Venezue­lan mi­grants pre­fer to re­main un­doc­u­ment­ed as they en­joy the ben­e­fits of not pay­ing tax and Na­tion­al In­sur­ance (NIS). Some of them even be­lieve it is eas­i­er to get work as an un­doc­u­ment­ed per­son, es­pe­cial­ly in the in­for­mal sec­tor. Once the en­vi­ron­ment is very tol­er­ant of mi­grants and law en­force­ment is not over­pow­er­ing, many mi­grants pre­fer to live in anonymi­ty, with­out le­gal sta­tus, es­pe­cial­ly if they see them­selves as tem­po­rary and can go back and forth to their home­land,” he told the Busi­ness Guardian.

Last week in a me­dia state­ment, Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­mand­ed that Gov­ern­ment reg­u­larise all Venezue­lans with mi­grant cards who do not have crim­i­nal records and al­low them to hold dri­ving per­mits and be­gin pay­ing all ap­plic­a­ble tax­es, such as con­tribut­ing to the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance sys­tem.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said Venezue­lan mi­grants who are law-abid­ing and con­tribut­ing to T&T’s econ­o­my should be ful­ly in­te­grat­ed in­to so­ci­ety.

“I am ex­treme­ly dis­ap­point­ed that the Gov­ern­ment has not yet seen it fit to ho­n­our our in­ter­na­tion­al oblig­a­tions un­der the 1951 Con­ven­tion Re­lat­ing to the Sta­tus of Refugees and the 1967 Pro­to­col Re­lat­ing to the Sta­tus of Refugees. In­stead, the Gov­ern­ment im­ple­ment­ed a hap­haz­ard pol­i­cy in 2020 and they reck­less­ly failed to fol­low up on sup­port­ing poli­cies and pro­grammes,” she said.

The Op­po­si­tion Leader added: “Mi­grants can­not ob­tain dri­ver’s li­cences and can­not be reg­is­tered for Na­tion­al In­sur­ance. They can­not tell em­ploy­ers that it’s okay to hire them be­cause their mi­grant per­mits have ex­pired and their aca­d­e­m­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tions are not recog­nised. They are un­banked and vul­ner­a­ble to ex­ploita­tion.”

In 2019, the Gov­ern­ment of­fered over 16,500 the right to live and work in T&T tem­porar­i­ly.

In Jan­u­ary of this year, the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds an­nounced a fourth ex­ten­sion of work per­mits for them since the ini­tial reg­is­tra­tion in 2019.

Gon­za­les al­so said Colom­bia of­fers a mod­el for T&T as Colom­bia start­ed with a two-year reg­is­tered sta­tus and lat­er up­grad­ed that to ten years with a path­way to cit­i­zen­ship.

“The Op­po­si­tion Leader is talk­ing about those who are al­ready reg­is­tered and whose sta­tus af­ter three years should be up­grad­ed to per­ma­nent res­i­dent or cit­i­zen­ship. I agree with this, as we should seek to of­fer them, as the Colom­bians have done, a path­way to cit­i­zen­ship once they have stayed here for a cer­tain time legal­ly. I al­so agree with the treat­ment of the ed­u­ca­tion of the chil­dren.”

Mi­grants’ eco­nom­ic con­tri­bu­tion

At­tor­ney-at-law Dar­rell Al­la­har, who has rep­re­sent­ed Venezue­lan mi­grants in T&T, told the Busi­ness Guardian that once these mi­grants are giv­en more rights to open bank ac­counts and pay tax­es, they will make a healthy con­tri­bu­tion to T&T’s econ­o­my and so­ci­ety as a whole.

He not­ed that four years af­ter they were first reg­is­tered to work in T&T in 2019, their le­gal sta­tus is still not as­sured.

“But now af­ter four years, many have set­tled and some have mar­ried T&T cit­i­zens. Many have had chil­dren in T&T and have start­ed small busi­ness­es and have made them­selves use­ful, hon­est mem­bers of so­ci­ety. There has been no ut­ter­ance by the gov­ern­ment that all of these peo­ple are to be sent back. So, if they are here be­cause it is some­what in­con­ve­nient and cost­ly to send them back, shouldn’t we con­sid­er reg­u­lar­is­ing their sta­tus to in­te­grate them ful­ly in­to the econ­o­my to which they now con­tribute?”

He spoke about Venezue­lan mi­grants’ con­tri­bu­tion to the SME sec­tor.

“Their labour cap­i­tal adds to the pro­duc­tion of goods and ser­vices. They are en­ti­tled to pri­ma­ry health­care. They ex­pect our pro­tec­tive ser­vices, fire ser­vices and am­bu­lance ser­vices to as­sist. They pay VAT as in­di­rect tax­pay­ers when­ev­er they pur­chase food, med­i­cine and cloth­ing. They pay rent to land­lords. Many have built their own small busi­ness­es—restau­rants, food prepa­ra­tion, cake dec­o­ra­tion, par­ty dec­o­ra­tion, sewing and even cheese and sausage mak­ing. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, most banks will not al­low them to open ac­counts. They can­not get a dri­ver’s per­mit or even own ve­hi­cles.”

Al­la­har al­so said Venezue­lan mi­grants with per­ma­nent le­gal sta­tus in T&T will al­so ben­e­fit the state eco­nom­i­cal­ly.

“From an eco­nom­ic point of view, it makes sense to bring the Venezue­lan mi­grant com­mu­ni­ty ful­ly in­to the for­mal eco­nom­ic sys­tem. It would ben­e­fit the State if they were li­able to pay in­come tax - since many of them are oth­er­wise qual­i­fied and hold de­grees and cer­tifi­cates, but can­not get jobs, oth­er than ba­sic po­si­tions be­cause of their sta­tus. Their par­tic­i­pa­tion in the for­mal job mar­ket will as­sist in con­tri­bu­tions to the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Fund.”

He al­so sug­gest­ed the le­gal path the Gov­ern­ment can take.

“The law is avail­able to be used. The Im­mi­gra­tion Act al­lows the Min­is­ter to grant what is called a Min­is­ter’s Per­mit—which al­lows one to live and work here for a cer­tain pe­ri­od. There is al­so the route of ap­pli­ca­tions for res­i­den­cy sta­tus, which I think they should be al­lowed to pur­sue once they are per­mit­ted to stay. Per­haps we can con­trast what we have done his­tor­i­cal­ly to in­te­grate the many thou­sands of mi­grants who have come from Grena­da, St Vin­cent, Bar­ba­dos, and the oth­er Caribbean Is­lands over the years. They were nev­er kept in sus­pense, and were in­cor­po­rat­ed as valu­able mem­bers of our so­ci­ety.”

He al­so made the ar­gu­ment that it is pos­si­ble Venezue­lan mi­grants can even vote here.

“Our elec­toral laws al­low for res­i­dents and non-Com­mon­wealth cit­i­zens re­sid­ing in elec­toral dis­tricts to be reg­is­tered as elec­tors and to re­ceive iden­ti­fi­ca­tion cards as vot­ers in Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions. It is cer­tain­ly some­thing to be con­sid­ered, since the in­ter­ests of every group, even mi­grants, in my view, should be rep­re­sent­ed and they should have a po­lit­i­cal voice if in­deed they have a vote.”

Fi­nal­ly, he said, apart from eco­nom­ics and the law, T&T has been built on a so­ci­ety where peo­ple have worked and built dreams and Venezue­lans in T&T fall in the same cat­e­go­ry.

“The law and eco­nom­ics aside, there is an­oth­er rea­son for in­te­grat­ing Venezue­lan mi­grants, that is just as im­por­tant. It is com­mon hu­man­i­ty and de­cen­cy. It is sim­ply cru­el to keep any­one, far less thou­sands in a state of le­gal and eco­nom­ic un­cer­tain­ty, while they build lives, fam­i­lies and busi­ness in this coun­try. T&T’s so­ci­ety has been built on the labour of those who came with noth­ing, and who have by hard work and sac­ri­fice, cre­at­ed a na­tion of many peo­ples. We are a land of new starts.”