Venezue­lans who risked their lives to cross the oceans in search of a bet­ter life in Trinidad are now cel­e­brat­ing hav­ing com­plet­ed reg­is­tra­tion, which al­lows them to live and work in Trinidad for a year.

The process ran smooth­ly on Sat­ur­day as reg­is­tra­tion con­tin­ued for a sec­ond day at the Achiev­ers Ban­quet Hall in San Fer­nan­do. Un­like Fri­day, there were no lines stretch­ing out of the build­ing. Most of the Venezue­lans wait­ing for reg­is­tra­tion stood in the shade un­der a tent. Venezue­lan De­lores Lee sold em­panadas and drinks.

Among those cel­e­brat­ing were Michael Alexan­der Perez Gar­cia, Car­los Ed­uar­do Ro­driguez, and Car­los Mon­tesinos. Short­ly af­ter they col­lect­ed their reg­is­tra­tion re­ceipts, the Venezue­lans walked over to Club 2000 to buy beers.

"This is our cel­e­bra­tion. We are very hap­py. Af­ter­ward, we will look for­ward to work," Gar­cia said. He added that Trinida­di­ans had opened up op­por­tu­ni­ties for them and they were very grate­ful.

Ronal­do Ramirez and his cousin Gre­icer Castil­lo were so hap­py that they bought choco­late and a drink for this re­porter.

"We want to say thanks. We are hap­py to find some op­por­tu­ni­ty here. In Venezuela life is dif­fi­cult," Ramirez said. He said his daugh­ter and his wife were still in Venezuela but he was hop­ing that they too could come to Trinidad.

Sev­er­al Trinida­di­an men with their wives and girl­friends al­so ar­rived at the fa­cil­i­ty for reg­is­tra­tion. Among them were Kevin Ram­per­sad, his wife, Mar­i­an­gle Toli­do and their one-year-old ba­by, Aina.

Ram­per­sad said he was re­lieved that the process was run­ning smooth­ly.

Mean­while, busi­ness­es in the area ran a brisk trade as the Venezue­lans re­quired pho­to­copy­ing, print­ing and in­ter­net ser­vices.

Out­side Photo­fu­sion Ltd, a print shop and dig­i­tal pho­to stu­dio lo­cat­ed near­by, about 30 Venezue­lans stood in a neat line wait­ing.

Own­er Steve Ra­jan said more than a hun­dred Venezue­lans came to do busi­ness on Fri­day. He said they lat­er de­vel­oped a sys­tem where on­ly a cer­tain num­ber of peo­ple were al­lowed in while the oth­ers wait­ed in line out­side.

He said the staff was as­sist­ing them in fill­ing out the re­quired forms, print­ing it, pho­to­copy­ing doc­u­ments and tak­ing out pho­tos.

"We have com­put­ers for them to fill out their forms on­line. We opened at 7:30 am to­day and all morn­ing we had cus­tomers," he said. At La Pique Plaza in San Fer­nan­do, more than 50 Venezue­lans were al­so do­ing copies.

Ra­jan said he was im­pressed at the be­hav­iour of the Venezue­lans.

"They are very po­lite and pa­tient. They do things with or­der. I had no prob­lems at all," he added. An­oth­er busi­ness place Pix­el Ad­ver­tis­ing re­port­ed a 50 per cent in­crease in sales.

Reg­is­tra­tion is ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue on Sun­day.

In To­ba­go

Mean­while, in To­ba­go, the process of reg­is­ter­ing Venezue­lan na­tion­als con­tin­ued at the Car­o­line Build­ing, Wil­son Road in Scar­bor­ough on Sat­ur­day. By mid­day less that 20 Venezue­lans had vis­it­ed the fa­cil­i­ty. Most en­ter­ing the com­pound could not speak Eng­lish but said the process was good or "Bueno".