Rhon­dor Dowlat

Even though a def­i­nite es­ti­mate of the il­le­gal fi­nan­cial gains gen­er­at­ed from mi­grant smug­gling is hard to be de­ter­mined, a Unit­ed Na­tions Of­fice on Drugs and Crime 2018 Re­port puts the glob­al min­i­mum eco­nom­ic re­turn for 2016 at US$5.5 to 7 bil­lion.

This was dis­closed on Wednes­day by par­lia­men­tary sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Glen­da Jen­nings-Smith dur­ing the of­fi­cial han­dover cer­e­mo­ny of doc­u­ments on Mi­grant Smug­gling to the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

T&T signed on­to the Unit­ed Na­tions Con­ven­tion against Transna­tion­al Or­gan­ised Crime and its re­lat­ed pro­to­cols—one of which is the Pro­to­col against the Smug­gling of Mi­grants by Land, Sea and Air in 2001 and rat­i­fied this in­stru­ment in 2006.

De­spite hav­ing signed on­to the Con­ven­tion and Pro­to­col 12 years ago, en­abling leg­is­la­tion is still to be en­act­ed.

How­ev­er, Jen­nings-Smith said she strong­ly be­lieves that the tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance ac­cessed by the T&T Gov­ern­ment from the African, Caribbean and Pa­cif­ic Group of States and the Eu­ro­pean Union (ACP-EU) Mi­gra­tion Ac­tion sig­ni­fies that T&T has tak­en its first step in bring­ing it­self in­to com­pli­ance with in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards per­tain­ing to the crime of mi­grant smug­gling.

She al­so gave the as­sur­ance that the Gov­ern­ment is “com­mit­ted to ad­dress­ing the is­sue.”

“The rec­om­men­da­tions set out by the ACP-EU Mi­gra­tion Ac­tion ex­pert are in­tend­ed to in­form T&T’s na­tion­al pol­i­cy and pro­vide a frame­work for the draft­ing of the nec­es­sary leg­is­la­tion, aimed at Crim­i­nal­is­ing mi­grant smug­glers, whether an in­di­vid­ual or an or­gan­i­sa­tion, Re­duc­ing il­le­gal mi­gra­tion, Avert­ing ex­ploita­tion, suf­fer­ing and loss of life, Pro­mot­ing co­op­er­a­tion among States and Pro­vid­ing pro­tec­tion and as­sis­tance to smug­gled per­sons,” Jen­nings-Smith said.

She added that the next step for T&T in­clud­ed the con­sid­er­a­tion of the rec­om­men­da­tions put for­ward by the ACP-EU Mi­gra­tion Ac­tion which are set out un­der four key ar­eas, “Pros­e­cu­tion and in­ves­ti­ga­tion; Pro­tec­tion and as­sis­tance; Pre­ven­tion; and Co­op­er­a­tion.”

“Da­ta on smug­gling are scarce, and there is no an­nu­al glob­al re­port on mi­grant smug­gling trends. Many coun­tries, in­clud­ing T&T, do not col­lect or pub­lish such da­ta. The lit­tle da­ta that does ex­ist are based on the num­ber of mi­grants ap­pre­hend­ed by the Im­mi­gra­tion Au­thor­i­ties and the num­ber of fraud­u­lent doc­u­men­ta­tion in cir­cu­la­tion; and this is not a com­pre­hen­sive fig­ure of the ac­tu­al scale of the prob­lem,” Jen­nings-Smith said.

The views of stake­hold­ers will be sought and in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to a na­tion­al pol­i­cy doc­u­ment which shall form na­tion­al leg­is­la­tion.

De­liv­er­ing re­marks on be­half of the Am­bas­sador of EU to T&T Arend Biese­broek was Mon­i­ca Paula Mclean, project man­ag­er del­e­ga­tion of the Eu­ro­pean Union to T&T.

She ex­plained that the out­put of this in­ter­ven­tion, which would have in­clud­ed an overview of the sit­u­a­tion, a draft pol­i­cy, train­ing ma­te­ri­als and a cadre of trained per­son­nel from the var­i­ous ser­vices—pro­vide an en­abling frame­work for sus­tained ef­forts in this area.

The next phase, she added, should in­clude the fi­nal­i­sa­tion of the pol­i­cy and amend­ment of ex­ist­ing, or the in­tro­duc­tion of new leg­is­la­tion.

“These ini­tia­tives, which are meant to ad­dress the se­cu­ri­ty and de­vel­op­ment of he coun­try, should al­so pro­mote mi­grants’ rights and en­sure that per­pe­tra­tors are pe­nalised in ac­cor­dance with the law,” Mclean said.