Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der an­nounced that 7,324 mi­grant chil­dren have been reg­is­tered in Trinidad and To­ba­go as part of the on­go­ing mi­grant reg­is­tra­tion pro­gramme.

Reg­is­tra­tion for chil­dren is free, while all adult mi­grants are re­quired to pay $700. The fig­ures come amid con­tin­ued ef­forts to process both adult and child mi­grants through the gov­ern­ment’s on­line reg­is­tra­tion por­tal.

Min­is­ter Alexan­der pro­vid­ed the lat­est da­ta, re­port­ing that the on­line plat­form has record­ed 1,249,888 hits, with 12,400 ap­pli­ca­tions sub­mit­ted and 16,466 in­com­plete or un­sub­mit­ted ap­pli­ca­tions.

He said Venezue­lans make up the ma­jor­i­ty of sub­mis­sions with 10,286 ap­pli­ca­tions, fol­lowed by Cubans (641) and Ja­maicans (530). Adults ac­count for the re­main­der of sub­mis­sions, but the min­is­ter em­pha­sised that chil­dren are a par­tic­u­lar­ly vul­ner­a­ble group re­quir­ing close at­ten­tion.

“The ob­jec­tive of mi­grant reg­is­tra­tion is to es­tab­lish a prop­er data­base de­tail­ing the skills, ex­pe­ri­ence, and qual­i­fi­ca­tions of mi­grants who can make a mean­ing­ful con­tri­bu­tion to so­ci­ety,” Alexan­der said. He not­ed that it is not clear how many mi­grants have been de­port­ed since the process be­gan.

On­line reg­is­tra­tion will re­main open un­til Feb­ru­ary 25, af­ter which ap­proved ap­pli­cants will be sched­uled for in-per­son ver­i­fi­ca­tion in­ter­views. Ap­pli­cants must first reg­is­ter at mi­grantreg­is­tra­tion.gov.tt.

Manda­to­ry in-per­son ver­i­fi­ca­tion is ex­pect­ed to be­gin at the end of Feb­ru­ary 2026, with the ex­act date to be an­nounced. Phys­i­cal vet­ting will take place at four venues: Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um (Port of Spain), Lar­ry Gomes Sta­di­um (Ari­ma), Ato Boldon Sta­di­um (Cou­va), and Dwight Yorke Sta­di­um (To­ba­go).

The ver­i­fi­ca­tion process will in­clude po­lice se­cu­ri­ty checks, fin­ger­print­ing, and back­ground screen­ing, along with on-site health as­sess­ments by the Min­istry of Health. Suc­cess­ful ap­pli­cants will re­ceive a mi­grant reg­is­tra­tion card au­tho­ris­ing them to live and work in Trinidad and To­ba­go un­til De­cem­ber 31, 2026.