Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Af­ter work­ing and liv­ing in T&T for years, sev­er­al Venezue­lan mi­grants may re­turn to their home­land for good, de­pend­ing on the out­come of their coun­try’s Pres­i­den­tial elec­tions next month.

The elec­tions, sched­uled for Ju­ly 28, will see the peo­ple elect a Pres­i­dent to lead the coun­try for a six-year term.

This time around, the man tasked with chal­leng­ing Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolàs Maduro of the Unit­ed So­cial­ist Par­ty of Venezuela will be for­mer diplo­mat Ed­mun­do Gonzàlez Ur­ru­tia, rep­re­sent­ing a large op­po­si­tion coali­tion known as the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Uni­tary Plat­form.

Maduro was first elect­ed Pres­i­dent in April 2013, nar­row­ly de­feat­ing op­po­si­tion can­di­date Hen­rique Capriles with less than two per cent of the votes sep­a­rat­ing them. He was elect­ed pres­i­dent a sec­ond time in May 2018, amidst fierce protests and con­dem­na­tion from the US and Venezue­lan op­po­si­tion over sev­er­al in­ci­dents in­volv­ing Amer­i­can diplo­mats and jour­nal­ists.

Amidst the un­rest, high cost of liv­ing and food short­ages in Venezuela, thou­sands of fam­i­lies mi­grat­ed to T&T be­gin­ning around 2015 to 2016, es­tab­lish­ing sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties along the south­west­ern coast in Ica­cos and Point Fortin.

While the Gov­ern­ment of T&T reg­is­tered 16,500 Venezue­lan mi­grants to work legal­ly in 2019, thou­sands more live and work in dif­fer­ent parts of the coun­try il­le­gal­ly.

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia’s ques­tions via What­sApp on Wednes­day, Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Dr Amery Browne said mi­grants were ex­pect­ed to cast their votes at the Venezue­lan Em­bassy in Port-of-Spain.

“This is not un­usu­al, and it has be­come a more com­mon prac­tice for coun­tries to utilise their over­seas mis­sions to fa­cil­i­tate their na­tion­als abroad to en­gage with the vot­ing process.”

Dr Browne added that the his­to­ry of diplo­mat­ic and eco­nom­ic ties be­tween both coun­tries tran­scend­ed lead­er­ship changes. “Our re­la­tions with Venezuela have spanned gen­er­a­tions to the mu­tu­al ben­e­fit of our re­spec­tive peo­ples. The re­la­tions have en­dured notwith­stand­ing var­i­ous changes in ad­min­is­tra­tion and lead­er­ship on both sides and shall en­dure long af­ter the Ju­ly 28 elec­tion in Venezuela, what­ev­er the out­come.”

‘I’ll re­turn home if

Maduro is vot­ed out’

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed Ica­cos on Tues­day and spoke with sev­er­al mi­grants who said Ju­ly’s elec­tion will be crit­i­cal in de­cid­ing whether they will re­turn home or re­main in Trinidad.

While trade arrange­ments may not be se­ri­ous­ly im­pact­ed by the elec­tions, the out­come at the polls will de­cide the fu­ture of some Venezue­lans liv­ing in T&T. For 26-year-old Yefer­son Cen­teno, Venezuela will al­ways be his home and hopes to re­turn soon, but said he was not will­ing to do so if Maduro wins the elec­tion again.

Cen­teno, who works as a labour­er at the Sandy Point Co­conut Pro­cess­ing Com­pa­ny, Ica­cos, has lived in T&T for the last five years and has not re­turned home since mi­grat­ing with his par­ents and broth­ers.

He said while he will not be re­turn­ing home to vote, he is hope­ful that Maduro will be vot­ed out of of­fice.

“I don’t want to go back to Venezuela right now. If the Pres­i­dent changes I will go back home. I want to go home, but the econ­o­my in Venezuela is not good. The salary of some peo­ple in Venezuela is on­ly US$2, when things get bet­ter I will re­turn but for now I will stay here.”

Cen­teno, who is from Delta Amacuro, said sev­er­al rel­a­tives who re­mained in Venezuela have com­plained of hard­ships and are hope­ful that a new Pres­i­dent and ad­min­is­tra­tion would im­prove the qual­i­ty of life for peo­ple.

An­oth­er mi­grant Je­sus Al­fre­do Thomas Abreu said sev­er­al Venezue­lans in­tend­ed to re­turn home to vote and were anx­ious to see what de­vel­op­ments were re­port­ed in the lead-up to the elec­tions.

“Peo­ple are hop­ing for a change be­cause it’s still re­al­ly hard in Venezuela. For one per­son to sur­vive you have to earn about US$100 per week. I know a few peo­ple who want to go back to vote, but they don’t have the mon­ey to re­turn.”

Abreu added that the sit­u­a­tion is fur­ther com­pli­cat­ed for some Venezue­lans who fled their coun­try and en­tered Trinidad il­le­gal­ly and may not have prop­er doc­u­men­ta­tion to re­turn home.

“The sit­u­a­tion we came here years ago was not a le­gal sit­u­a­tion, we had big prob­lems.”

Mi­grants still com­ing, but num­bers have dropped

Guardian Me­dia sent ques­tions to the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty on the rates of mi­gra­tion and de­por­ta­tion of Venezue­lan mi­grants on Mon­day but did not re­ceive a re­sponse or ac­knowl­edge­ment of the email as of Fri­day af­ter­noon.

How­ev­er, Abreu said while there was still a no­tice­able in­flux of mi­grants, the vol­ume of mi­grants has dropped in re­cent times com­pared to the large move­ments of fam­i­lies ob­served be­fore the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

“In Venezuela now you get work, you may strug­gle to make ends meet, but peo­ple pre­fer stay­ing at home, but those few who want bet­ter­ment in life still come here.” Life­long Ica­cos res­i­dent Al­fred John Williams agreed that there has been a drop in the num­ber of Venezue­lan mi­grants en­ter­ing from that part of the is­land. Williams, 74, is the own­er of the Sandy Point Co­conut Pro­cess­ing Com­pa­ny which he op­er­ates from his home, with­in walk­ing dis­tance from the beach­front where many mi­grants dis­em­bark from ves­sels.

“We’ve seen the vol­ume (of mi­grants) die down a bit. They are still com­ing but the peo­ple I’ve no­ticed com­ing in may just work for a pe­ri­od of time and re­turn home, or they may come to buy food­stuff and go home, but they don’t stay very long.”

While in Ica­cos sev­er­al Venezue­lan chil­dren were seen car­ry­ing cas­es of soft drinks, large bags of snacks and oth­er gro­ceries to their homes.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia on Thurs­day head of the na­tion­al of­fice for the UN High Com­mis­sion for Refugees (UN­HCR) Aman­da Solano said as of 2024 there were 34,000 peo­ple reg­is­tered as refugees from 40 dif­fer­ent coun­tries in T&T.

Of this fig­ure, she re­port­ed the ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple ap­ply­ing for refugee sta­tus were Venezue­lans. “Venezue­lans rep­re­sent 86 per cent of the to­tal 34,000 that are reg­is­tered with us and Cubans will be sev­en per cent and the rest will be the mix of na­tion­al­i­ties. Around 2018 and 2019 were the peak (in refugee ap­pli­ca­tion) but the num­bers have changed.”

Solano al­so not­ed that while the terms were some­times con­fused, refugees were de­fined as peo­ple who were forced to flee their coun­try of ori­gin due to a threat to their lives or a vi­o­la­tion of their hu­man rights.

She not­ed that peo­ple who qual­i­fy as refugees of­ten could not re­turn to their home­land with­out a clear threat to their life or free­dom. Mi­grants are peo­ple who cross an in­ter­na­tion­al bor­der ei­ther per­ma­nent­ly or tem­porar­i­ly for dif­fer­ent rea­sons but can re­turn home with­out any threat to their lives.

She said re­gard­less of their back­grounds, refugees sought pro­tec­tion in the coun­tries they mi­grate to and the op­por­tu­ni­ty to pro­vide for them­selves, re­fer­ring to the re­cent de­ci­sion by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to ac­cept 200 chil­dren in schools in Sep­tem­ber.

Mixed re­spons­es from Ica­cos res­i­dents to Venezue­lan neigh­bours

De­spite not study­ing the lan­guage for­mal­ly, Williams is flu­ent in Span­ish af­ter liv­ing in Ma­turin, Venezuela, for three years when he was younger.

This pro­fi­cien­cy in the lan­guage has helped him com­mu­ni­cate ef­fec­tive­ly with Cen­teno and oth­er Venezue­lan work­ers at his work­shop. He said while some peo­ple have had prob­lems with mi­grants, he ap­pre­ci­ates their work eth­ic.

“More than 50 per cent of the peo­ple in Ica­cos speak Span­ish. I pay the same rate to Venezue­lan em­ploy­ees as to oth­er work­ers. You’re sure they will show up to work, in fact, they might come and ask if I need help with any­thing as op­posed to a lo­cal who you might have to prac­ti­cal­ly beg to come in.”

Dur­ing a post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing in June 2019, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said reg­is­tered mi­grants would be ex­empt from pay­ing Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Sys­tem (NIS) con­tri­bu­tions.

Dr Row­ley said the earn­ings of Venezue­lans would fall be­low the thresh­old of $6,000 and there­fore would not qual­i­fy for NIS de­duc­tions. How­ev­er, in a me­dia re­lease last May, Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar called on the Prime Min­is­ter to al­low mi­grants with no crim­i­nal record to be­gin con­tribut­ing to the NIS.

Guardian Me­dia sent ques­tions to the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board (NIB) on whether any mi­grants were con­tribut­ing to the NIS sys­tem, but they de­clined com­ment. Out­side of hav­ing a busi­ness re­la­tion­ship with Venezue­lans, Williams’ con­nec­tion to the cul­ture al­so ex­tends to his fam­i­ly; his daugh­ter-in-law and grand­daugh­ter-in-law are Venezue­lans.

He al­so has two bilin­gual grand­chil­dren. One fish­er­man who asked not to be named said he has not had many pos­i­tive in­ter­ac­tions with the mi­grants over the years and of­ten avoids them. Re­fer­ring to an in­ci­dent in 2020 where he claimed he was shot by Venezue­lan pi­rates at sea, the man felt it would be bet­ter if the mi­grants re­turned home.

“We went out to sea to pick up my seine net and I saw this boat with Venezue­lans ap­proach­ing us. They start­ed to shoot at us, and we got out of there as fast as we could. I didn’t even re­alise I was shot. The bul­let went through my arm and the oth­er one is still stuck there. They do what they want in Ica­cos here, we don’t feel safe here at all.” Oth­er fish­er­men agreed that mi­grants have cre­at­ed more com­pe­ti­tion for odd jobs and fish­ing in the area and felt more should be done to pre­vent a fur­ther in­flux of mi­grants.