Soyi­ni Grey

Trinidad and To­ba­go does not have a refugee pol­i­cy. That means that peo­ple who have been forced from their coun­try by war, per­se­cu­tion and/or a nat­ur­al dis­as­ter, have no way of ac­cess­ing shel­ter here. Specif­i­cal­ly, it means that the Venezue­lan mi­grants who are get­ting in­to boats, brav­ing rough wa­ters and pi­rates to land here be­cause they sim­ply can­not con­tin­ue to live in their home coun­try, can on­ly be clas­si­fied as il­le­gal mi­grants, re­gard­less of how good their rea­sons are for leav­ing Venezuela be­hind.

In 2014, the Gov­ern­ment cre­at­ed a draft en­ti­tled “A phased ap­proach to­wards the es­tab­lish­ment of a Na­tion­al Pol­i­cy to ad­dress Refugee and Asy­lum mat­ters in the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go.” It was adopt­ed by Cab­i­net in June 2014. The draft has a clear de­f­i­n­i­tion for who would be con­sid­ered a refugee, if the pol­i­cy was made law. It de­tails prin­ci­pals of main­tain­ing fam­i­ly units, of non-de­ten­tion and spe­cialised train­ing for the staff of the el­i­gi­bil­i­ty com­mit­tee that would be need­ed to as­sess ap­pli­ca­tions for ap­proval and de­nial.

There are all fac­tors that would have gov­erned the treat­ment of the Venezue­lan na­tion­als, in­clu­sive of the 16 chil­dren, who land­ed on these shores on Tues­day.

Dra­mat­ic videos shot af­ter their ar­rival showed the group ly­ing on makeshift beds in a po­lice sta­tion cell. The im­ages are har­row­ing and T&T's in­ter­na­tion­al rep­u­ta­tion has tak­en a beat­ing as a re­sult.

Pro­fes­sor of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions at Al­ber­ta Uni­ver­si­ty W Andy Knight says hav­ing signed on to the UN Con­ven­tion and Pro­to­col Re­lat­ing to the Sta­tus of Refugees in 2000, but not hav­ing leg­is­la­tion im­ple­ment­ed at home, “the gov­ern­ment has on the in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el said one thing, but at the do­mes­tic lev­el they haven't done the same thing."

The Gov­ern­ment has said these are eco­nom­ic mi­grants and not refugees. Knight says this might have to do with the fact that de­por­ta­tion is then seen an ap­pro­pri­ate cause of ac­tion be­cause, "they are not go­ing to nec­es­sar­i­ly lose their lives" if re­turned to Venezuela. But he al­so says with T&T in a re­ces­sion, Gov­ern­ment's ac­tions may be gov­erned by those con­cerns.

"The Prime Min­is­ter is try­ing to make the point that Trinidad and To­ba­go can­not af­ford to have the del­uge, this in­flux, of refuges in­to the coun­try," Knight, who pre­vi­ous­ly worked at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, said.

But there is a grow­ing ar­gu­ment that out­side T&T's hu­man rights oblig­a­tions, the Venezue­lan mi­gra­tion in­to this coun­try has the po­ten­tial to add val­ue to the lo­cal labour mar­ket.

The In­ter­na­tion­al Or­gan­i­sa­tion on Mi­gra­tion's (IOM) Dis­place­ment Track­ing Ma­trix (DTM) con­duct­ed in 2019 gives de­tails of the pro­file of the mi­grant to T&T. Some 42 per cent of them had a sec­ondary school ed­u­ca­tion and 17 per cent com­plet­ed uni­ver­si­ty. Most were sin­gle and be­tween the ages of 20-30 years. IOM's DTM con­sul­tant, Leigh-Ann Wal­dropt-Bonair, says da­ta like this should en­cour­age pol­i­cy­mak­ers to con­sid­er how they can bet­ter in­te­grate them in­to the lo­cal work­force.

The 2014 draft pol­i­cy ends by say­ing “states are an­swer­able for the ob­ser­vance of hu­man rights and are re­quired to com­ply with the le­gal norms and stan­dards en­shrined in in­ter­na­tion­al hu­man rights in­stru­ments." For some ob­servers, T&T is dan­ger­ous­ly close to vi­o­lat­ing that di­rec­tive.