Hundreds of Venezuelans turn up on first day of registration in Trinidad

(Trinidad Guardian) Hun­dreds of Venezue­lan na­tion­als, some of whom slept on the side­walks in San Fer­nan­do and Port-of-Spain on Thurs­day night to be ahead in the line, turned out yesterday on the first day of the 13-day reg­is­tra­tion which will al­low them to work and live in this coun­try legal­ly for up to a year.

The re­sponse in To­ba­go was min­i­mal.

Venezue­lans trick­led in­to the To­ba­go reg­is­tra­tion cen­tre lo­cat­ed at the Car­o­line Build­ing in Scar­bor­ough.

There were more se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel and work­ers than Venezue­lans were at the cen­tre. Be­fore the cen­tre opened at 7 am, a truck­load of sol­diers ar­rived adding to a rel­a­tive­ly large squad of po­lice­men who had manned the cen­tre overnight.

The hus­tle and bus­tle, as­so­ci­at­ed with the ex­er­cise, was the on­ly flur­ry of ac­tiv­i­ty on the is­land.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials ad­mit­ted that the turnout was much small­er than an­tic­i­pat­ed.

For many who queued up out­side the Achie­vors Ban­quet Hall, Dun­can Street in San Fer­nan­do and Queen’s Park Oval, in Port-of-Spain, the process was slow and some­times frus­trat­ing.

Many were un­able to print the ap­pli­ca­tion form and the web­site to ac­cess it crashed on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions. Some com­plained that trans­la­tors had dif­fi­cul­ty un­der­stand­ing them which dragged out the in­ter­view process.

Out of a to­tal of 415 Venezue­lan na­tion­als who came to reg­is­ter in San Fer­nan­do, the ma­jor­i­ty were asked to re­turn with prop­er doc­u­ments. At the Oval, the gate was closed at 3.30 pm with just about 300 mi­grants in­side still to be in­ter­viewed.

Act­ing Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds told re­porters out­side the Oval it should have tak­en no more than 15 min­utes for each ap­pli­cant with a reg­is­tra­tion of­fi­cer. Hinds said close to 2,000 mi­grants were processed yes­ter­day.

“From re­ports I got, the process is rolling smooth­ly,” he said. How­ev­er, he said the num­ber of peo­ple which the coun­try may have ex­pect­ed to show up to be reg­is­tered did not ma­te­ri­alise, but he re­mind­ed cit­i­zens it is a two-week ex­er­cise.

He was hap­py, how­ev­er, that things were off to a “good start. The sys­tem worked,” he said.

Hinds said one of the con­cerns the pub­lic has ex­pressed on the is­sue in­volved back­ground checks.

“We knew this op­por­tu­ni­ty would at­tract crim­i­nals, smug­glers, hu­man traf­fick­ers, gun run­ners. We want to en­sure we don’t im­port trou­ble for law en­force­ment and peo­ple so back­ground checks are ob­vi­ous­ly nec­es­sary,” he said.

Hinds said reg­is­tra­tion cards would not be is­sued un­til back­ground checks are done. In­ter­pol has as­sured they’ll re­spond more prompt­ly than usu­al. He said the web­site with re­quired forms was now ac­ces­si­ble af­ter some de­lay. The forms were meant to re­duce pro­cess­ing time and with­out them, it will take longer.

On what will oc­cur af­ter Venezue­lans’ one year per­mit is over, Hinds said Gov­ern­ment could de­cide any­thing af­ter the year, but he “couldn’t speak for Gov­ern­ment to­day.” He warned that if Venezue­lans did not use the process, they run the risk of “be­ing out­side the sun­shine” and out of con­so­nance with T&T’s law.

“We re­mind Venezue­lans, you’re wel­come to be here, you can work, you’re en­ti­tled to ba­sic med­ical care and all else we can ac­cord you, but we hope you don’t of­fend the laws. If that hap­pens the po­lice and De­fence Force will have to treat with is­sues,” he said.

Hinds has as­sured Venezue­lan na­tion­als that the in­for­ma­tion sup­plied by them for reg­is­tra­tion will be strict­ly con­fi­den­tial and will not be shared.

He was re­spond­ing to con­cerns by Venezue­lans that their fam­i­lies could face po­lit­i­cal per­se­cu­tion in their home­land if the in­for­ma­tion they gave to T&T au­thor­i­ties was leaked to Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties.

Busi­ness or­gan­i­sa­tions, such as Pres­tige Hold­ings, took ad­van­tage of the op­por­tu­ni­ty to of­fer jobs to the mi­grants. Dig­i­cel al­so of­fered free SIM cards to mi­grants.

Act­ing Prime Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said last week of­fi­cial fig­ures from the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion re­vealed 9,080 Venezue­lan na­tion­als who ar­rived in this coun­try legal­ly be­tween 2016 to now and a fur­ther 12, 257 had ap­plied had ap­plied for asy­lum though the Unit­ed Na­tions High Com­mis­sion­er for Refugees.

But the UN has es­ti­mat­ed be­tween 40,000 to 60, 000 Venezue­lans who fled their home­land to T&T which is fac­ing eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal cri­sis.

In the weeks ahead to the reg­is­tra­tion ex­er­cise, boat­loads of mi­grants ar­rived at se­clud­ed beach­es across the coun­try. Those who were held by po­lice were grant­ed su­per­vi­so­ry or­ders by the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion to re­port back to au­thor­i­ties in 30 days.

The pas­sen­ger fer­ries were turned back by the Coast Guard al­though ves­sels trad­ing in car­go were al­lowed to dock at King’s Wharf, in San Fer­nan­do.

The Gov­ern­ment hopes that all Venezue­lans liv­ing in T&T will take ad­van­tage of the reg­is­tra­tion process. Those with crim­i­nal con­vic­tions or pose a threat to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty will be de­port­ed. Those who reg­is­ter suc­cess­ful­ly will be pro­vid­ed with a tem­po­rary iden­ti­fi­ca­tion card.

The reg­is­tra­tion launched by Gov­ern­ment to grant amnesty to Venezue­lans who have been in T&T legal­ly or il­le­gal­ly will al­low them to work for a year.

It will al­so in­form the Gov­ern­ment on the num­ber of Venezue­lans in T&T fol­low­ing in­creased ar­rivals, post-po­lit­i­cal tur­moil “next door”.