Trinidad: No registration cards yet for Venezuelans

(Trinidad Guardian) Reg­is­tra­tion cards have not yet been is­sued to Venezue­lans who reg­is­tered re­cent­ly since Gov­ern­ment is still work­ing out who should be in T&T, who should not be and who are crim­i­nals.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said so in Par­lia­ment last Fri­day night dur­ing de­bate of an Op­po­si­tion mo­tion seek­ing to an­nul Gov­ern­ment’s Im­mi­gra­tion Reg­u­la­tions.

The reg­u­la­tions—in force since May 24—fa­cil­i­tat­ed the one-year work­ing arrange­ment Gov­ern­ment in­sti­tut­ed for Venezue­lans who reg­is­tered in the re­cent amnesty ex­er­cise. Young slammed the Op­po­si­tion mo­tion which he said arose long af­ter the reg­u­la­tions went in­to force. The mo­tion failed.

He said the to­tal of 16,523 Venezue­lans reg­is­tered in­clud­ed 7,016 fe­males, 9,507 males and 2,421 mi­nors—1,211 girls and 1,210 boys.

In the cur­rent process of de­ter­min­ing who can stay, he said he was still sign­ing de­por­ta­tion or­ders.

He said the wealth of in­tel­li­gence gath­ered from the reg­is­tra­tion—what boats brought peo­ple in, how much they paid, who was in­volved—is cur­rent­ly be­ing analysed by Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty. “T&T will see op­er­a­tions where we go af­ter the Big Fish who act­ed in hu­man traf­fick­ing in T&T,” he added.

‘Reg­is­tra­tion does not as­sist with res­i­den­cy or cit­i­zen­ship, they don’t qual­i­fy to vote’

He said the Prime Min­is­ter’s visa sys­tem for Venezue­lans was im­ple­ment­ed im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter but could not be an­nounced be­fore to avoid the “pull fac­tor”. He said,”On­ly three us knew of it…”

Young re­it­er­at­ed reg­is­tra­tion would not as­sist Venezue­lans with res­i­den­cy or cit­i­zen­ship and they don’t qual­i­fy to vote. He said the re­cent US Traf­fick­ing re­port on T&T pre-dat­ed the reg­is­tra­tion and Gov­ern­ment were com­mend­ed by the US for it. But he said that wasn’t nec­es­sary since Gov­ern­ment would “do what’s right and pro­tect T&T’s sov­er­eign­ty and we wouldn’t have any coun­try dic­tate to us how we should run our coun­try—we stand proud to say so”!