Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Reporter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Ad­vo­cates and mem­bers of the mi­grant com­mu­ni­ty have wel­comed the Gov­ern­ment’s ex­pan­sion of the Mi­grant Reg­is­tra­tion Frame­work, which al­lows for all un­doc­u­ment­ed mi­grants to reg­is­ter and legal­ly live and work in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Co­or­di­na­tor of the La Ro­maine Mi­grant Sup­port Group, Ang­ie Ram­nar­ine, de­scribed the move as long over­due, say­ing it brings much-need­ed re­lief to the tens of thou­sands of mi­grants cur­rent­ly liv­ing in the coun­try, many of whom are Venezue­lan na­tion­als. She said there is al­so a sig­nif­i­cant Cuban mi­grant pop­u­la­tion.

Ram­nar­ine said the an­nounce­ment stands in stark con­trast to a memo is­sued by the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty on Oc­to­ber 27, which threat­ened the mass de­por­ta­tion of un­doc­u­ment­ed mi­grants.

She said the memo sparked fear and pan­ic with­in mi­grant com­mu­ni­ties across the coun­try.

“Even on Christ­mas Eve, I was hear­ing re­ports about un­doc­u­ment­ed mi­grants be­ing ar­bi­trar­i­ly picked up by the po­lice. Hope­ful­ly, there is some kind of or­gan­ised sys­tem that puts an end to the sort of ar­bi­trari­ness of be­ing picked up for de­por­ta­tion.”

She said this was one of the best and most hu­mane meth­ods to col­lect da­ta on mi­grant pop­u­la­tions in the coun­try.

Ram­nar­ine, how­ev­er, said, “There still needs to be con­sul­ta­tion with em­ploy­ers be­cause re­mem­ber it’s big in­dus­tries like hos­pi­tal­i­ty and con­struc­tion that de­pend heav­i­ly on mi­grant work­ers. I feel we need to put prop­er struc­ture and sys­tems on how we cat­e­gorise the dif­fer­ent types of mi­grants. We have some who may have ar­rived legal­ly and over­stayed time. Some would have ar­rived il­le­gal­ly and just kept un­der the radar. When we are do­ing da­ta col­lec­tion, we can al­so use it as some sort of skills bank to see what skills, if any, these peo­ple have brought with them and how we can even utilise it for our own growth and de­vel­op­ment.”

Ram­nar­ine said there were is­sues with the pre­vi­ous reg­is­tra­tion process in 2019 for un­doc­u­ment­ed Venezue­lans.

She re­called that the Gov­ern­ment ini­tial­ly stat­ed there would have been six reg­is­tra­tion cen­tres, but this was re­duced to three, and there were long lines, with many mi­grants hav­ing to overnight.

She al­so ap­pealed to em­ploy­ers to give mi­grant work­ers time off to reg­is­ter, not­ing that this was a ma­jor is­sue dur­ing the pre­vi­ous reg­is­tra­tion ex­er­cise.

Mean­while, at­tor­ney Criston J Williams of Quan­tum Le­gal, who works with mi­grants and refugees, de­scribed the move as a win-win for all par­ties in­volved.

Williams was hope­ful that the frame­work would be fur­ther ex­pand­ed to in­clude health­care for mi­grants.

“In terms of an in­ter­na­tion­al per­spec­tive for a pos­i­tive out­look for T&T hu­man rights. This is a great move,” he said.

In a me­dia re­lease, the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty said the ex­pan­sion forms part of a strate­gic ef­fort to pro­mote eq­ui­ty and bol­ster na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

Un­der Le­gal No­tice No 470, the Im­mi­gra­tion (Ex­emp­tion from Work Per­mit) (Im­mi­grants) Or­der, 2025, the frame­work al­lows all reg­is­tered il­le­gal im­mi­grants to live and work legal­ly in T&T from Jan­u­ary 1, 2026, to Sep­tem­ber 30, 2026.

The min­istry will over­see the is­suance of reg­is­trant cards, which will dis­play an in­di­vid­ual’s name, date of birth, pho­to­graph and ex­pi­ra­tion date.

Dur­ing the 2019 reg­is­tra­tion of un­doc­u­ment­ed Venezue­lans con­duct­ed un­der the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion, then op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar raised con­cerns that the then gov­ern­ment could is­sue iden­ti­fi­ca­tion cards to Venezue­lans and oth­er non-Com­mon­wealth cit­i­zens, po­ten­tial­ly en­abling them to vote in up­com­ing lo­cal and gen­er­al elec­tions.

Mean­while, then UNC deputy po­lit­i­cal leader, David Lee, had called for the reg­is­tra­tion of all il­le­gal mi­grants. He had al­so stat­ed that the in­flux of Venezue­lans seek­ing a bet­ter life could place strain on T&T’s so­cial ser­vices, health sys­tem and ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor.