Venezuelan migrants settle into life in Trinidad after registration

(Trinidad Guardian) Gas­par­il­lo res­i­dent Verne and his Venezue­lan part­ner Jen­nifer will like­ly be head­ing for the al­tar since he said Jen­nifer was among the 400 who didn’t suc­ceed in be­ing reg­is­tered last Fri­day.

“It might be the on­ly thing we can do since she’s not well and even though she tried for reg­is­tra­tion she didn’t make it and in any case, that’s on­ly for a year,” he told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day af­ter spend­ing a long Fri­day—up to 9 pm—with her at the South reg­is­tra­tion cen­tre.

Verne said Jen­nifer, 35, came to T&T legal­ly last Sep­tem­ber from Tu­cu­pi­ta. She reg­is­tered with the Unit­ed Na­tions as a refugee seek­ing asy­lum, but couldn’t work. She de­cid­ed to ap­ply for the amnesty—fa­cil­i­tat­ing em­ploy­ment—when this was of­fered. “But last Fri­day at the South cen­tre, about 400 of them didn’t get through since they had no forms. She was among them. Plen­ty peo­ple cried Fri­day when they shut the cen­tre and peo­ple told us the reg­is­tra­tion was over.

“She didn’t go back since she has kid­ney is­sues and had an op­er­a­tion at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal to re­move kid­ney stones.”

He said Jen­nifer has chil­dren in Tu­cu­pi­ta and they both send things back to her home­town for the chil­dren. “But she felt if she could work legal­ly she would have been able to send more things back to them. As it is now, since we’re al­ready a com­mon-law man and wife, we ll prob­a­bly make it le­gal and she won’t have to go through any more has­sle with lin­ing up, won­der­ing if she’ll have a job af­ter a year or seek­ing refugee asy­lum.”

Farm­ing, PriceS­mart shop­ping in Cen­tral

Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber pres­i­dent Vish­nu Char­ran and mem­bers con­firm an ap­prox­i­mate 25 per cent in­crease in vis­i­bil­i­ty of Venezue­lans in the area since reg­is­tra­tion be­gan and ex­pect more.

Char­ran said, “They’re feel­ing safer now and peo­ple are job-seek­ing, fam­i­lies out shop­ping. They’re main­ly seek­ing con­struc­tion and agri­cul­ture jobs and peo­ple are em­ploy­ing them from Cou­va to Cara­pichaima.

“One Cou­va busi­ness­man in a pep­per/pota­to farm em­ployed 15. Un­skilled Venezue­lan women have been seek­ing house­keep­ing jobs. Some lo­cals are of­fer­ing jobs out of com­pas­sion as well as due to lack of steady lo­cal labour for agri­cul­ture and con­struc­tion sec­tors.

“Cer­tain­ly oth­ers are wor­ried about safe­ty—and are cau­tious—af­ter see­ing re­ports of Venezue­lans and crime and one killing a woman. One per­son from a par­tic­u­lar Cen­tral vil­lage told me they’re see­ing so many of them in their vil­lage, they’re wor­ried.”

Cham­ber mem­ber Bil­ly Ali said, “There’s mixed sen­ti­ment. Some Cen­tral busi­ness peo­ple and res­i­dents are con­cerned about the Venes and crime. But their pres­ence has in­deed in­creased the labour pool, some busi­ness­men wish more of them can speak Eng­lish.

“They’re al­ready con­tribut­ing eco­nom­i­cal­ly since we’re see­ing them shop­ping in PriceS­mart, Busy Cor­ner, and Su­per­Pharm. They call lo­cal PH taxi when they need trans­port and some have opened small food busi­ness­es in En­deav­our, Long­denville, and Ch­agua­nas.”

Pa­lo Seco 93 work­ing, some still in the bush

At least 28 out of the 93 Venezue­lans who were found in the Pa­lo Seco for­est a month ago are now reg­is­tered and work­ing, but there is still a group who are liv­ing off the grid in forest­ed ar­eas of the com­mu­ni­ty.

Res­i­dents of the area said last Wednes­day that those peo­ple have not sought to reg­is­ter, but are more fo­cused on work­ing where they can find em­ploy­ment and “buy­ing up bags of rice and flour” to send back to rel­a­tives in Venezuela.

Mem­bers of a Unit­ed Na­tions con­tin­gent which vis­it­ed some oth­er Venezue­lans in the area to­day, were ex­pect­ed to meet with the group in the for­est.

How­ev­er, some of those found in the for­est last month, who had been stay­ing at the Ir­win Park fa­cil­i­ty, sought reg­is­tra­tion and were ap­proved. Kim Quashie, as­sis­tant to Siparia cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Glen Ra­mad­har con­firmed this.

She said a fe­male Cunu­pia farmer em­ployed three and four are en­gaged in con­struc­tion work, both with room/board plus salary. One fe­male got a se­cu­ri­ty post with a $6,025 month­ly salary.

Three for­mer Venezue­lan sol­diers al­so got se­cu­ri­ty jobs, with one work­ing at Pen­ny­wise in La Ro­main. A for­mer col­lege pro­fes­sor is hop­ing to teach at any pri­vate school, but in the in­ter­im, he is work­ing on a farm, Quashie said.

An­oth­er got a job as a me­chan­ic in Pa­lo Seco. Quashie said oth­ers got con­struc­tion work and are be­ing paid be­tween $200-$250 a day. One man who is a bak­er got a job in Mara­bel­la. “Sev­er­al are go­ing for Sub­way in­ter­views in Pe­nal and we al­so have forms for them for KFC,” she added.