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Venezuelans line up in front the Immigration building, Port of Spain, to deliver their updated documents during a registration process. FILE PHOTO - ANGELA RAMNARINE of the La Romaine Migrant Support Programme said the government's move to restart its migrant registration programme as an expanded initiative for all migrants was largely welcomed by Venezuelans in TT, although a small group questioned its credibility. Speaking to Newsday on December 30, she recalled being inundated with phone calls from employers in recent times voicing their strong support for Venezuelans as fantastic workers, especially at construction sites. She said the regularisation also applies to migrants illegally present in TT.
Ramnarine recalled 16,000 Venezuelan migrants being registered and regularised in TT in 2019.
"But the numbers kept decreasing every year. We ended up with more illegal migrants than legal."
She said those who were not registered have felt like they were being hunted by the law.
She said the new exercise would allow two crucial things – data collection and control.
Asked about the reactions of Venezuelans in TT to the announcement, she said, "Many are welcoming it. A tiny minority feel it is a set-up."
However, Ramnarine said the PM has always said she was on the side of the people of Venezuela, in the row over the legitimacy of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
"Every migrant is here because of (ex-president Hugo) Chavez or Maduro. They actually blame Chavez and Maduro for their sorry fate, their displacement."
She recalled one migrant pleading to the PM for a chance to be in TT until Maduro was gone.
Paraphrasing the migrant, she said, "We fear persecution on our return, because Maduro runs a very repressive regime, which we don't talk about.
"We have all these academics and politicians and people who talk about sovereignty, but for me are divorced of the issues of the man on the ground, the bread-and-butter issues.
"To preach diplomacy in theory, they are basically out of tune.
"Everybody on the ground wants Maduro to go, so they basically support the US." She said some migrants see Maduro's exit as their only hope to return to Venezuela."
Newsday asked about US President Trump's threat to deport Venezuelans, even as TT now moves to welcome them.
Ramnarine said Trump had wanted to deport 600,000 Venezuelans, but the TT government was now regularising migrants.
Newsday asked if Trump's blockade of Venezuela and a possible embargo enforced by the US military was likely to cause a new influx of Venezuelan migrants to TT.
She said, "It is also a strategy which I felt the US was using at one time: be kinder to migrants right at this part of the world to prevent them going up north.
"Before Trump, the previous US Embassy representatives that I used to meet with actually offered help to migrants and I feel their thinking was that maybe if we make life a little easier for migrants in this neck of the woods, we would prevent an exodus northwards.
"Maybe this is also part of that thinking: Let us try to regularise who we have here."
Ramnarine wondered why the regularisation was for just nine months and not the full year of 2026.
She added that employers ought to be brought into the conversation.
"Because when our PM has uttered that, 'Those who want to go, go!' kind of thing, you know how many employers I had calling me up?
"They said they can't do without their labour force. So I don't think you realise how much of an impact these people have made on our labour force, especially in industries like construction and the service industries like running bars, and cleaning homes."
Newsday again asked about Venezuelan migrant reactions to the news of fresh registration.
She said, "Many are welcoming it, because what they were experiencing up to Christmas Eve night, I had calls of people being arrested in an ICE-like way."
Saying these arrests seemed arbitrary, she welcomed the new regularisation move.
"It reduces the arbitrariness of which people are picked out for deportation.
"I am seeing cases where a whole group of people are arrested and those who can pay their way out, get off.
"Those who can't, stay incarcerated and languish in the system until they can be deported."
Newsday asked if these were allegedly under-the-table payments, as opposed to hiring attorneys. Ramnarine said yes.
Ramnarine said many Venezuelan migrants were thriving in Portugal and Spain, countries treating migrants well, as opposed to being in no man's land in TT.
"If you missed that 2019 registration, you basically acted as if you were a fugitive from the law.
"We had gone through a phrase recently where people were too afraid to go to work, or too afraid to send their children to school. There were reports of police checking taxis."
Asked when this had happened, she said after the October 27 media release by the Ministry of Homeland Security.
"I would think that media release spurred that kind of reaction, and rightfully so.
"They talked about mass deportations and a mass deportation exercise. There are so many contradictory memos coming out of ministries.
"So it will ease the sense of panic. We should have less arbitrariness in who deports who between police and Immigration, and who is eligible for deportation of now.
"Otherwise people had to behave as if they were being hunted and persecuted."
English (US) ·