STEPHON NICHOLAS

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Venezue­lan mi­grants in To­ba­go have praised the on­go­ing na­tion­al reg­is­tra­tion frame­work, de­scrib­ing the process as fast and ef­fi­cient and ex­press­ing sat­is­fac­tion with how they were treat­ed by of­fi­cials.

Mi­grants thanked po­lice of­fi­cers, im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials and med­ical per­son­nel, say­ing they were cour­te­ous and pro­fes­sion­al through­out the ex­er­cise.

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 200 mi­grants were sched­uled to be processed at the Dwight Yorke Sta­di­um in Ba­co­let on Tues­day, one of four cen­tres across the coun­try where in-per­son reg­is­tra­tions are tak­ing place as part of the Mi­grant Reg­is­tra­tion Frame­work ex­er­cise.

A trans­la­tor was on hand to help bridge the lan­guage gap and en­sure mi­grants un­der­stood and com­plied with all in­struc­tions.

A Venezue­lan man, who chose to be iden­ti­fied on­ly as Vic­tor, said there was a clear dif­fer­ence be­tween the cur­rent reg­is­tra­tion ex­er­cise and the 2019 ini­tia­tive un­der the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment.

“The process was re­al­ly fast, re­al­ly or­gan­ised and the of­fi­cials treat­ed us re­al­ly well,” Vic­tor said. “Be­fore, about six or sev­en years ago in the first reg­is­tra­tion, it was a dis­as­ter. This time, every­thing was fast and smooth.”

Vic­tor added that he now feels com­fort­able walk­ing the streets with­out fear of de­por­ta­tion.

“I feel good, com­fort­able. I can walk nor­mal­ly on the road and no one is chas­ing you. It’s a le­gal process,” he said.

An­oth­er mi­grant, Juan, al­so from Venezuela, de­scribed the process as im­por­tant and thanked the Gov­ern­ment for fa­cil­i­tat­ing it. He said he has al­ways been in Trinidad and To­ba­go legal­ly and that every­thing went quick­ly once his doc­u­ments were in or­der.

Act­ing As­sis­tant Su­per­in­ten­dent Sharon Williams su­per­vised the pro­ceed­ings in To­ba­go and re­port­ed that the process went smooth­ly over­all. She ac­knowl­edged that an in­ter­net is­sue briefly af­fect­ed op­er­a­tions ear­ly in the day but said it had since been re­solved.

On Jan­u­ary 22, Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der an­nounced the na­tion­al mi­grant reg­is­tra­tion frame­work. Phase one in­volved on­line reg­is­tra­tion be­fore an in-per­son in­ter­view, af­ter which suc­cess­ful ap­pli­cants are is­sued a mi­grant reg­is­tra­tion frame­work card valid un­til De­cem­ber 31. Ap­pli­ca­tions cost $700 per per­son, ex­clud­ing chil­dren.

Williams said the process in To­ba­go was pro­gress­ing well.

“Thus far, things are run­ning smooth­ly. We had a lit­tle is­sue at the start yes­ter­day; how­ev­er, we have since worked on that and things are re­al­ly run­ning smooth­ly. We an­tic­i­pate we can get the 200 per­sons who are set for pro­cess­ing to­day com­plet­ed,” she said.

Williams out­lined the steps in­volved in the reg­is­tra­tion process, say­ing mi­grants un­der­go an ini­tial se­cu­ri­ty check up­on ar­rival, fol­lowed by a health screen­ing by nurs­es and doc­tors. Po­lice of­fi­cers from the crim­i­nal records sec­tion then take fin­ger­prints while ac­com­pa­nied by im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials.

“The process is by ap­point­ment. The av­er­age is about 200 per­sons per day,” she said.

Asked whether mi­grants who did not reg­is­ter on­line would still be processed, Williams said, “I an­tic­i­pate if some­one comes who does not have an ap­point­ment per se, they will make the nec­es­sary arrange­ments to ac­com­mo­date them.”