Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

A del­e­ga­tion of Venezue­lan mi­grants and in­dige­nous peo­ple, led by the La Ca­sitas His­pan­ic Cul­tur­al Cen­tre, vis­it­ed the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty at the Wa­ter­front Com­plex in Port-of-Spain on Wednes­day as con­cerns in­ten­si­fied over missed ap­point­ments, failed on­line reg­is­tra­tions and the lack of of­fi­cial re­spons­es.

The group, led by Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor An­dreina Briceño Ven­tu­ra-Brown, gath­ered out­side the min­istry seek­ing ur­gent en­gage­ment with of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der, over what they de­scribed as on­go­ing break­downs in the reg­is­tra­tion sys­tem.

Ven­tu­ra-Brown said re­peat­ed at­tempts to ob­tain clar­i­ty from the min­istry had gone unan­swered.

“Well, so far, we don’t have any re­sponse,” she said. “Even un­til last night, I sent an email ex­plain­ing the en­tire sit­u­a­tion and I didn’t get any re­ply.”

She said the del­e­ga­tion in­clud­ed in­dige­nous mi­grants and oth­er vul­ner­a­ble ap­pli­cants strug­gling to nav­i­gate the reg­is­tra­tion process.

“So, we are here to­day try­ing to speak with the min­is­ter. We are ask­ing the min­is­ter to at least re­spond to our email,” she said. Ven­tu­ra-Brown added that while min­istry staff ac­knowl­edged re­ceipt of cor­re­spon­dence, no clear so­lu­tion had been pro­vid­ed. “We got kind re­spons­es to­day from the staff,” she said. “We’re just ex­pect­ing this email will be re­spond­ed to.”

She said the aim of the vis­it was to en­sure vul­ner­a­ble groups were not ex­clud­ed from the process. “We don’t want to leave any­body be­hind, in­clud­ing my in­dige­nous com­mu­ni­ty,” she said.

Venezue­lan mi­grant In­dro Ale­jan­dro Cabr­era Del­ga­do said fam­i­lies con­tin­ued to face in­con­sis­tent out­comes with­in the reg­is­tra­tion sys­tem, with some mem­bers processed while oth­ers re­mained with­out ap­point­ments. “Mine in par­tic­u­lar, I got through with my ap­point­ment, but my wife, she didn’t get through yet,” he said. “I think that is not our fault. I think that is the fault of the sys­tem.”

He said mi­grants had ex­pe­ri­enced re­peat­ed is­sues with both the on­line sys­tem and in-per­son pro­cess­ing at­tempts.

“Some peo­ple are hav­ing prob­lems with the reg­is­tra­tion on­line and oth­er peo­ple … they nev­er got through with the ap­point­ment,” he said.

Cabr­era Del­ga­do said vis­its to mul­ti­ple lo­ca­tions, in­clud­ing sta­di­um-based reg­is­tra­tion sites, had not re­sult­ed in any res­o­lu­tion.

“At the be­gin­ning they were try­ing to help us, but af­ter a few hours wait­ing … they said they can­not help us,” he said.

He added that dozens of mi­grants re­mained in sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tions.

“We are more than 20, be­tween 20 and 30 peo­ple, that we have dif­fer­ent kinds of prob­lems,” he said.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact Alexan­der for com­ment; how­ev­er, calls went unan­swered.