Cen­tre for Jus­tice chair­man Har­vey Bor­ris is lend­ing his sup­port to the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Stu­art Young for his pro­pos­al of a one-year amnesty for Venezue­lan refugees who are cur­rent­ly re­sid­ing in T&T.

How­ev­er, he be­lieves this op­por­tu­ni­ty should al­so be ex­tend­ed to oth­er Cari­com na­tion­als fac­ing a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Bor­ris said that this coun­try owes it to these Cari­com na­tion­als who are liv­ing il­le­gal­ly in T&T and strug­gling for work.

“Cari­com are our biggest trad­ing part­ners in terms of man­u­fac­tured goods. You go to any Cari­com is­land and there you’d see our goods on their shelves…be­ing sold there and be­ing loved there. We have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to our Cari­com broth­ers and sis­ters,” he said.

There are many peo­ple from Cari­com na­tions cur­rent­ly re­sid­ing il­le­gal­ly in T&T strug­gling to find work to sup­port them­selves and their fam­i­lies. Bor­ris sug­gest­ed that they be giv­en a short time frame, close to a month, where they can go to be reg­is­tered and reg­u­larised in T&T.

Bor­ris lauds the min­is­ter for the ini­tia­tive.

Last week, he sent a let­ter to the min­is­ter stat­ing, “It is of our qual­i­fied view that we owe the same lev­el of re­spect and con­sid­er­a­tion for Cari­com na­tion­als.” He al­so re­mind­ed Young that T&T is a sig­na­to­ry to the Cari­com Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my (CSME) and the Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas, which was agreed to by all mem­ber states on Ju­ly 4, 1973.

Young re­cent­ly an­nounced a pro­posed amnesty pe­ri­od to al­low Venezue­lans here to reg­is­ter. Once they do so, the Venezue­lans will be al­lowed to work here for a year legal­ly.

It is es­ti­mat­ed there are over 60,000 Venezue­lans set­tled in T&T af­ter flee­ing their coun­try which is in po­lit­i­cal tur­moil. Since 2014, more than 1.8 mil­lion peo­ple have fled Venezuela be­cause of dif­fi­cult liv­ing con­di­tions.