An SOS for help has gone out to law en­force­ment from a group of Venezue­lans who came be­fore the re­cent reg­is­tra­tion ex­er­cise but did not get the op­por­tu­ni­ty to reg­is­ter and who are now al­leged­ly be­ing “kept” by peo­ple they are work­ing for.

That prob­lem, plus job scams, sex­u­al ad­vances on job in­ter­views and oth­er is­sues are among some of the ex­pe­ri­ences Venezue­lan mi­grants have en­coun­tered since Gov­ern­ment’s reg­is­tra­tion ex­er­cise end­ed on June 14—a month to­day.

Mem­bers of sev­er­al Venezue­lan com­mu­ni­ty net­works re­lat­ed ex­pe­ri­ences to the Sun­day Guardian as Venezue­lans con­tin­ue set­tling in and await­ing their reg­is­tra­tion cards.

Last Thurs­day, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said cards be­ing print­ed should be dis­trib­uted in a few weeks. He said reg­is­tra­tion forms had pro­vid­ed a wealth of in­for­ma­tion and au­thor­i­ties were now track­ing prob­lems, in­clud­ing traf­fick­ing. But for those in T&T who did not reg­is­ter, au­thor­i­ties would not have in­for­ma­tion on cer­tain prob­lems af­fect­ing them.

In­ter­preter Aracelie D’Oliv­era, part of var­i­ous groups as­sist­ing mi­grants, has, how­ev­er, been get­ting in­for­ma­tion be­yond what is on forms. She said she re­ceived a mes­sage ear­ly last week from a Venezue­lan man who sought help. He said he came to T&T pri­or to the reg­is­tra­tion but did not get to reg­is­ter and he and 25 oth­ers were now work­ing for em­ploy­ers in the East-West cor­ri­dor (lo­ca­tions giv­en) and were now al­leged­ly be­ing “held hostage” to en­sure they worked off pay­ment for the trip.

The man told D’Oliv­era he came here il­le­gal­ly with about 25 oth­ers.

They thought they were be­ing brought for the reg­is­tra­tion, “But “we were fooled,” he said. He said his em­ploy­ers op­er­at­ed with oth­er Venezue­lans, but they were de­mand­ing pay­ment for the trip and some of his col­leagues had worked off pay­ment up to $900 so far.

D’Oliv­era said: “He said they’re work­ing 12-15 hours dai­ly but want to re­turn to Venezuela even if they starve. They begged for au­thor­i­ties to be told since they feel en­dan­gered. I sent the in­for­ma­tion to po­lice (last) Wednes­day.”

Yes­ter­day, a po­lice spokesman told the Sun­day Guardian they were check­ing in­to the sit­u­a­tion.

D’Oliv­era said she al­so re­ceived in­for­ma­tion from three women last week that when they went for job in­ter­views they were in­stead ap­proached for sex. In­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing a pros­ti­tu­tion ring was re­ceived as well.

“But Venezue­lans’ main prob­lem is the job mar­ket get­ting small­er as many more are job-hunt­ing,” D’Oliv­era said.

“Those who don’t know how to do any­thing and can’t speak Eng­lish are most af­fect­ed. One good thing is there’s much as­sis­tance with free med­ical help—up to last Thurs­day in St James—and ed­u­ca­tion. We al­so told peo­ple about the US med­ical ship com­ing in Sep­tem­ber and many are go­ing there for at­ten­tion.”

Job scams ram­pant

Ari­ma-based, Venezue­lan-born ac­tivist Au­d­ri­na Brown doc­u­ments is­sues af­fect­ing Venezue­lans and ad­vis­es them on mat­ters. She’s as­sist­ed peo­ple in the food trade, ad­ver­tis­ing, an­i­mal hus­bandry and trav­el ser­vices.

She told the Sun­day Guardian is­sues in the job mar­ket were many for Venezue­lans.

“While there’s more re­cep­tion to them, is­sues are still crop­ping up. At an East Trinidad job site, some peo­ple didn’t want the Venezue­lans work­ing there,” she said.

The most per­turb­ing case, she not­ed, in­volved a Venezue­lan doc­tor who was seek­ing work. She said af­ter the reg­is­tra­tion he’d told her he read a sto­ry in the T&T Guardian three weeks ago about get­ting health sec­tor jobs. He im­me­di­ate­ly went to the Min­istry in Port-of-Spain to seek one. How­ev­er, he was told there was no in­for­ma­tion on that.

“He told us some­one lat­er called to tell him they could place him in a health job, they had con­nec­tions with Im­mi­gra­tion and Health, but he had to pay them his first salary. We told him it ap­peared to be a scam. He’s now pro­vid­ing med­ical ser­vices for Venezue­lans but we in­tend to go to the Med­ical Board with him to see if he can reg­is­ter to of­fi­cial­ly work in his field or help the com­mu­ni­ty some­how.”

Yes­ter­day, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh re­it­er­at­ed that the min­istry was not pro­vid­ing health sec­tor jobs for Venezue­lans. He re­ferred the scam is­sues to Young. Ef­forts to con­tact Young were un­suc­cess­ful as he did not re­spond to calls.

Brown added: “We al­so have re­ports of peo­ple be­ing asked to pay $200 out of their salary when cer­tain East Trinidad jobs are found for them. We ad­vise peo­ple on not pay­ing to get jobs, prop­er re­cruit­ing pro­ce­dure and things like union dues re­duc­tions as op­posed to scam artists.

“Al­so, some peo­ple are con­cerned about hav­ing to work very long hours and get­ting less pay. Em­ploy­ers may not al­ways be con­cerned about los­ing an em­ploy­ee, as they may feel it may be easy to get oth­ers. Al­so, since a woman was re­cent­ly raped while go­ing to a job in­ter­view, we ad­vise peo­ple not to go on in­ter­views by them­selves and have clear di­rec­tions.”

More $ for de­greed work­ers

Port-of-Spain-based Venezue­lan com­mu­ni­ty ac­tivist Hei­di Diquez says every­one was wait­ing for the reg­is­tra­tion cards to ma­te­ri­alise, al­though em­ploy­ers were ac­cept­ing the reg­is­tra­tion slip giv­en to ap­pli­cants in the in­ter­im.

“How­ev­er, there needs to be a wake-up call to em­ploy­ers not to ex­ploit work­ers, since we have re­ports of peo­ple hav­ing to work long hours, Sun­day to Sun­day, es­pe­cial­ly in con­struc­tion. No Venezue­lan is go­ing to com­plain for fear of los­ing the work and that’s an ad­van­tage for em­ploy­ers but it al­so car­ries a so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for them not to ex­ploit that,” she said.

In some cas­es, she added, em­ploy­ers should al­so ac­knowl­edge—and prop­er­ly com­pen­sate—those high­ly qual­i­fied, bilin­gual work­ers.

Diquez said many skilled peo­ple with de­grees were be­ing paid min­i­mum wage.

“This in­cludes pri­vate sec­tor nurs­es and in oth­er ar­eas. If peo­ple don’t have an edge, pay them min­i­mum wage, but where in the world will you get a bilin­gual per­son with skills/de­grees be­ing paid min­i­mum wage? We hope this changes,” Diquez said.

“We have a lot of pro­fes­sion­als in our data­base—teach­ers, nurs­es, doc­tors—so we hope they can move from the ar­eas they’re in now to their true fields. The Cubans who work here are like the Venezue­lans, there should be some flex­i­bil­i­ty to al­low Venezue­lan doc­tors to al­so work in the field.”

Visa is­sues for hun­dreds

Venezue­lan-born, T&T-based ac­tivist Mon­i­ca Joseph says while some ap­pli­cants were slight­ly wor­ried about a lack of reg­is­tra­tion cards, they’ve got­ten jobs and em­ploy­ers are hir­ing.

“There’s a sense of grat­i­tude but al­so con­cerns about lack of lines of com­mu­ni­ca­tion on the reg­is­tra­tion card,” she said.

But the big­ger con­cern re­mains T&T’s visa process for Venezue­lans.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young has said it was in train and some peo­ple were get­ting visas, but there is lit­tle de­tail on its work­ings.

Joseph said no­tices were is­sued for the process on June 29 and in­for­ma­tion al­so giv­en out in Venezuela gave the visa cost as TT$400.

“Re­quire­ments are very de­tailed and some ques­tions on the form are strange, they don’t show an un­der­stand­ing of how Venezue­lans live,” she said.

Joseph’s grand­moth­er, aunt and cousin have been ap­ply­ing for visas to at­tend her sis­ter’s wed­ding in T&T ahead.

“It’s like the US visa sys­tem, if you don’t get the visa, there’s no re­fund of your pay­ment. You al­so need a bank ac­count for more than two years, a cer­tain amount of mon­ey and a re­served tick­et. Most air­lines don’t re­serve tick­ets so you have to buy one and if you buy that and you don’t get the visa, you lose not on­ly the visa pay­ment but al­so the tick­et cost,” Joseph ex­plained.

Sev­er­al Venezue­lan friends of hers who have res­i­den­cy ap­pli­ca­tions for T&T pend­ing and who were in oth­er coun­tries, seek­ing to re­turn to T&T, have felt the “sting” of the process. Joseph said there was no grace pe­ri­od for start-up and those re­turn­ing T&T were stymied.

One friend, who has a res­i­den­cy ap­pli­ca­tion for T&T on­go­ing, was in Colom­bia for chemother­a­py and had sought to re­turn to T&T but couldn’t, she said.

“She had to buy a tick­et for Venezuela to ap­ply for a visa there to come to T&T even though she had a res­i­den­cy ap­pli­ca­tion for T&T,” Joseph said.

“A sec­ond friend, who al­so has a T&T res­i­den­cy ap­pli­ca­tion pend­ing, went to Pe­ru and got stuck there. She went to the T&T con­sulate for help but she’s be­ing re­ferred to T&T’s Cara­cas em­bassy—for a visa.”

A third friend who’s mar­ried to a Trinida­di­an and has had a T&T res­i­den­cy ap­pli­ca­tion pend­ing for 15 years ar­rived in T&T on the Mon­day af­ter the visa re­quire­ment was an­nounced.

“Im­mi­gra­tion halt­ed her and said ap­pli­ca­tion or not, she need­ed a visa and they were go­ing to de­port her.”

Diquez said pass­ports may al­so strain Venezue­lans’ re­sources.

“Pass­ports are sell­ing at (US)$500. Reg­u­lar peo­ple can’t af­ford that so when they des­per­ate­ly need to get food, med­i­cine or a job to make a lit­tle mon­ey, they’ll con­tin­ue com­ing through il­le­gal ports.”