Carisa Lee

Re­porter

Ac­tivist Sofia Figueroa-Leon is sur­prised by Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s stance on Venezue­lan mi­grants. Per­sad-Bisses­sar said her in­com­ing gov­ern­ment will take ag­gres­sive ac­tion against any il­le­gal Venezue­lan mi­grants who en­gage in crim­i­nal con­duct and de­port them.

“This com­ing from the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion is quite shock­ing, in­deed flab­ber­gast­ing,” said Figueroa-Leon, who de­scribed the state­ment as ir­re­spon­si­ble, ig­no­rant, and filled with hate.

“Noth­ing is fur­ther from the truth,” she said. How­ev­er, the ac­tivist ad­mit­ted that a mi­gra­tion pol­i­cy is need­ed for refugees and asy­lum seek­ers.

Co-or­di­na­tor of the Mi­grant Sup­port group Ang­ie Ram­nar­ine sup­port­ed Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s stance, adding that any mi­grant who sup­ports com­mit­ting crimes, whether here legal­ly or il­le­gal­ly, should be de­port­ed.

“But just as she wants to take those very strong mea­sures which are very ad­mirable, I think be­fore we even get to them be­ing here, we should ex­am­ine how they are get­ting in here ... we have peo­ple go­ing and com­ing; Venezuela is To­ba­go, you know,” she said.

Ram­nar­ine said she works with mi­grant chil­dren to en­sure the up­com­ing gen­er­a­tion is not per­pe­tra­tors of crime. Ram­nar­ine said what a lot of Venezue­lans don’t re­alise is that they were self-sab­o­tag­ing their chances of be­ing in­clud­ed, and there are seg­ments of the mi­grant pop­u­la­tion who re­coil in hor­ror when their com­pa­tri­ots com­mit crimes.

“Be­cause they are all paint­ed with the same brush stroke, every­body gets a neg­a­tive stereo­type; it’s al­so hor­ri­ble for those who are gen­uine­ly try­ing to bet­ter their lives here,” she said.

Out­side Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, op­po­si­tion sen­a­tors said they sup­port their leader’s po­si­tion. “The ho­n­ourable leader is on the ground like any­body else, and peo­ple are re­port­ing the con­duct of these Venezue­lans,” Sen­a­tor Wade Mark said.

Sen­a­tor Dami­an Ly­der point­ed out that not all il­le­gal im­mi­grants are com­mit­ting vi­o­lent acts.

“At the end of the day, we al­ready have a se­ri­ous crime prob­lem to deal with even with our cit­i­zen­ry far less for il­le­gal im­mi­grants com­ing in through our porous bor­ders,” he said.

Sen­a­tor David Nakhid agreed with Per­sad-Bisses­sar that the Gov­ern­ment had failed to do re­li­able checks and bal­ances on the Venezue­lan mi­grants.

“We don’t know if it’s 70,000, 200,000, 300,000.” They can­not be ac­count­ed for, we don’t know who is in the nor­mal econ­o­my, the un­der­ground econ­o­my, the shad­ow econ­o­my. We do not know, and that’s a fact,” he said. Nakhid said Per­sad-Bisses­sar wants to keep “our peo­ple” safe, in­clud­ing Venezue­lans who are reg­is­tered to be here.