Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is de­mand­ing that Gov­ern­ment reg­u­lar­ize all Venezue­lans with mi­grant cards who do not have crim­i­nal records and al­low them to hold dri­ving per­mits and be­gin con­tribut­ing to the NIS sys­tem.

In a press re­lease yes­ter­day, 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 rec­og­nized. They are un­banked and vul­ner­a­ble to ex­ploita­tion.”

She al­so not­ed: “Our pub­lic pri­ma­ry health­care sys­tem is ap­par­ent­ly open to them, but how ef­fec­tive is that when our med­ical staff do not speak their lan­guage?”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar called for el­i­gi­ble mi­grants to be ful­ly in­te­grat­ed in­to so­ci­ety by:

Reg­u­lar­is­ing all who hold mi­grant cards and have no po­lice record.

Al­low­ing Venezue­lan mi­grant card hold­ers to be al­lowed to ap­ply for dri­ver’s per­mits.

Al­low­ing Venezue­lan mi­grants to pay all ap­plic­a­ble tax­es as T&T cit­i­zens and to be­gin con­tribut­ing to the NIS.

Al­low­ing Venezue­lan chil­dren to at­tend pub­lic schools to ed­u­cate them­selves.

Al­low­ing part of T&T’s med­ical staff to be trained in ba­sic Span­ish to al­low Venezue­lans to ac­cess med­ical care.