Chil­dren were faint­ing in 33°C weath­er as thou­sands of Venezue­lan mi­grants rushed to reg­is­ter for Gov­ern­ment’s amnesty ahead of Fri­day’s dead­line, which Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said won’t be ex­tend­ed.

It means that those who are not reg­is­tered when the three cen­tres—Queen’s Park Oval, Port-of-Spain, the Achie­vors Ban­quet Hall in San Fer­nan­do and Car­o­line Build­ing in Scar­bor­ough, To­ba­go—clos­es face de­por­ta­tion back to Venezuela. He said a de­ci­sion would be tak­en on those who reg­is­ter on­line be­fore the ex­pi­ra­tion of the dead­line.

Young said those in the prison sys­tem will al­so be de­port­ed. Us­ing an in­ter­preter to speak to the mi­grants who crammed un­der tents out­side the San Fer­nan­do cen­tre, Young thanked them for reg­is­ter­ing but urged them to com­plete the process. 

The reg­is­tra­tion process be­gan on May 31 and since then hun­dreds of Venezue­lans have been lin­ing up, some overnight, to be able to work and live in this coun­try for up to a year.

“The Gov­ern­ment is not go­ing to be ex­tend­ing the reg­is­tra­tion process. We have had the on­line process set up, we have been pro­cess­ing peo­ple and we are not go­ing to be ex­tend­ing. I start­ed off yes­ter­day morn­ing with an ear­ly meet­ing with the act­ing Chief of De­fence Staff, our Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and our in­tel­li­gence ser­vices to make sure that we con­tin­ue as much as we can to lock down our bor­ders,” Young told re­porters.

He said the Po­lice Ser­vice and the De­fence Force have been mon­i­tor­ing the coasts and have been turn­ing away boats try­ing to come to T&T, as he dis­missed re­ports that boat­loads of fresh mi­grants had land­ed re­cent­ly.

Po­lice was on du­ty to man­age the traf­fic as thou­sands of mi­grants spilled off the pave­ment, the wait­ing area and sur­round­ing build­ings along the SS Erin Road, Dun­can Vil­lage.

The staff there re­port­ed chil­dren and preg­nant women faint­ing and falling ill af­ter wait­ing for hours in the line. Young, who toured the fa­cil­i­ty, said that he saw a child, who suf­fers from epilep­sy, re­ceiv­ing med­ical at­ten­tion. 

“Yes, I have seen some preg­nant women and we are try­ing to move as quick­ly as we can. Again, there are the things you face when you are deal­ing with mass crowds, not on­ly for reg­is­tra­tion but when you are do­ing con­certs and you have huge crowds lin­ing up, there are al­ways prob­lems you face. 

“We are do­ing the best we can and are treat­ing peo­ple as hu­mane­ly as we can. As a cit­i­zen of T&T, I am very proud of the process. There was a lot of crit­i­cism even be­fore. By and large, it has gone ex­treme­ly well.”

But for sev­er­al mi­grants, they found the process to be un­fair as they said some of­fi­cials were pick­ing peo­ple out of the line and giv­ing them pref­er­ence.

Marly Mar­cano said she had been wait­ing to be reg­is­tered since Sat­ur­day but kept be­ing pushed back. Al­most in tears, she said show­ing up to reg­is­ter has brought her a lot of dis­com­fort and pain.

As for chil­dren born here, Young said in­ter­na­tion­al prac­tice will con­tin­ue and they will be­come cit­i­zens. He de­clined to pro­vide an es­ti­mat­ed num­ber of Venezue­lans al­ready reg­is­tered up to Mon­day. 

He said it does not make sense giv­ing fig­ures on a dai­ly ba­sis as it changes as the day goes along and peo­ple be­gin to spec­u­late.

He said that at the end of the reg­is­tra­tion, he will tell the pub­lic the fi­nal count of mi­grants reg­is­tered and the cost in­curred.