“What's next?”

That's the ques­tion be­ing asked by Venezue­lan ac­tivist, Sofia Figueroa-Leon, fol­low­ing the as­sur­ance that there would be an au­to­mat­ic ex­ten­sion for reg­is­tered Venezue­lan mi­grants.

Dur­ing Thurs­day’s Post-Cab­i­net Me­dia Brief­ing, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young guar­an­teed that hold­ers of reg­is­tra­tion cards would get a six-month ex­ten­sion at the end of the pe­ri­od for which they are reg­is­tered.

How­ev­er, Figueroa-Leon said with the ab­sence of a prop­er mi­grant pol­i­cy, Venezue­lans are sub­ject­ed to a lack of ba­sic hu­man rights and pub­lic ser­vices.

“Un­til prop­er po­lices are draft­ed,” she says, “we will con­tin­ue in the same way, with peo­ple com­plain­ing. Gov­ern­ment is not com­plain­ing so my ques­tion is, what will hap­pen af­ter the six months? Are you go­ing to round them up and bring an­oth­er air­plane and put all of them and send them back to Venezuela? What’s go­ing to hap­pen when those six months pass?”

Sofia Figueroa-Leon made the com­ment dur­ing an in­ter­view with CNC3 NEWS, to­day.

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Sto­ry by JESSE RAMDEO