M in­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly must be com­mend­ed for fi­nal­ly al­low­ing 200 Venezue­lan mi­grant chil­dren, whose par­ents are legal­ly reg­is­tered in this coun­try, to be en­rolled in cer­tain pri­ma­ry schools.

Some mi­grants left Venezuela to seek a bet­ter life here. It seems that T&T, with its in­creas­ing crime, pover­ty, and bleak eco­nom­ic out­look, still of­fers hope to some.

Chil­dren up­root­ed from their neigh­bour­hoods, rel­a­tives, and cul­ture may face a dif­fi­cult time set­tling in a new coun­try, es­pe­cial­ly liv­ing in squalor with par­ents fear­ful of be­ing de­port­ed.

As a mat­ter of fact, we were ob­lig­at­ed to fol­low Ar­ti­cle 28 of the UN Con­ven­tion on the Rights of a Child, which states:1. Coun­tries should recog­nise the right of the child to ed­u­ca­tion, and with a view to achiev­ing this right pro­gres­sive­ly and on the ba­sis of equal op­por­tu­ni­ty, they shall, in par­tic­u­lar:(a) Make pri­ma­ry ed­u­ca­tion com­pul­so­ry and free to all;(b) En­cour­age the de­vel­op­ment of dif­fer­ent forms of sec­ondary ed­u­ca­tion, in­clud­ing gen­er­al and vo­ca­tion­al ed­u­ca­tion, make them avail­able and ac­ces­si­ble to every child, and take ap­pro­pri­ate mea­sures such as the in­tro­duc­tion of free ed­u­ca­tion and of­fer­ing fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance in case of need;(c) Make high­er ed­u­ca­tion ac­ces­si­ble to all on the ba­sis of ca­pac­i­ty by every ap­pro­pri­ate means;(d) Make ed­u­ca­tion­al and vo­ca­tion­al in­for­ma­tion and guid­ance avail­able and ac­ces­si­ble to all chil­dren;(e) Take mea­sures to en­cour­age reg­u­lar at­ten­dance at schools and the re­duc­tion of drop-out rates.

Crit­i­cism of the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion has come from the tax­pay­ers strug­gling to make ends meet, who think it is un­fair they have to foot this bill, which is clear­ly due to a fail­ure of our na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus in pro­tect­ing our bor­ders.

More so, since the Gov­ern­ment has in­creased the statu­to­ry lim­it of bor­row­ings un­der the De­vel­op­men­tal Loans Act from $65 to $75 bil­lion, as this cre­ates an eco­nom­ic bur­den for our fu­ture gen­er­a­tion.

A pos­si­ble so­lu­tion is to re­quest that the UN and oth­er NGOs who were de­mand­ing this help as­sist in foot­ing the bill.We can tap in­to UNICEF’s Ed­u­ca­tion The­mat­ic Fund, where the in­come reached $39.4 mil­lion in 2022.Bilin­gual teach­ers can al­so be re­quest­ed from the UN, as some lo­cal teach­ers are al­ready over­bur­dened by their reg­u­lar work­load, and not all are flu­ent in Span­ish.

These un­for­tu­nate chil­dren did not ask to come here. I am con­fi­dent most of our par­ents would see the need to ed­u­cate them re­gard­less of their sen­ti­ments on il­le­gal mi­grants.

Al­low­ing 200 chil­dren in­to the ed­u­ca­tion­al sys­tem would al­so al­low cit­i­zens to mon­i­tor any con­tin­ued lapse with our bor­der se­cu­ri­ty if en­rol­ment num­bers keep in­creas­ing.

Be­sides the cost bur­den and teacher burnout, we al­so have to be cog­nizant of the emo­tion­al prob­lems that can be en­coun­tered by mi­grant chil­dren.

On April 8, 2021, in a US News ar­ti­cle, “Sui­ci­dal thoughts are in­creas­ing in young kids”, Tyler Kingkade writes, “More than a dozen men­tal health pro­fes­sion­als, in­clud­ing school coun­sel­lors, so­cial work­ers, psy­chi­a­trists and sui­ci­dol­o­gists, said they are see­ing more chil­dren as young as kinder­garten who are in dire need of sup­port.

“For chil­dren of im­mi­grant fam­i­lies, based on in­ter­views with more than 200 Lati­no par­ents, we found both adults and chil­dren in their fam­i­lies had high­er lev­els of anx­i­ety due to fears of de­por­ta­tion and an­ti-im­mi­grant rhetoric... pover­ty has as an im­pact al­so.”

We have al­ways known that the preva­lence of de­pres­sion, anx­i­ety, and PTSD tends to be high­er among mi­grants than among host pop­u­la­tions.

In the Oc­to­ber 2023 is­sue of Schiz­o­phre­nia Re­search, a Swedish na­tion­al study on mi­gra­tion and risk of schiz­o­phre­nia and bipo­lar dis­or­der, found that “first-gen­er­a­tion mi­grants had in­creased risk of schiz­o­phre­nia and de­creased risk of bipo­lar dis­or­der. Child­hood mi­grants from all re­gions had in­creased risk of schiz­o­phre­nia.”

Our psy­chi­atric clin­ics need to pre­pare.Clin­ic ap­point­ments could be co­or­di­nat­ed with a trans­la­tor pro­vid­ed by the Venezue­lan em­bassy, who can cap­ture cul­tur­al nu­ances missed by Google trans­la­tion. We need to pro­vide ser­vices that are cul­tur­al­ly sen­si­tive to en­cour­age par­tic­i­pa­tion.

We need to al­so fac­tor in school lunch­es for these mi­grant chil­dren.

Al­though teas­ing is com­mon in young chil­dren, it can lead to iso­la­tion and bul­ly­ing; we need a pro­to­col in place to mit­i­gate this pos­si­bil­i­ty.

While peo­ple think that pri­ma­ry school chil­dren are ex­empt from de­pres­sion, re­cent da­ta col­lect­ed in the USA for NBC News by the Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal As­so­ci­a­tion, found that the num­ber of chil­dren ages 6-12 who vis­it­ed chil­dren’s hos­pi­tals for sui­ci­dal thoughts or self-harm has more than dou­bled since 2016.

The as­so­ci­a­tion doc­u­ment­ed 5,485 emer­gency room or in­pa­tient vis­its for sui­ci­dal thoughts and self-harm among 6 to 12-year-olds at these hos­pi­tals in 2019, up from 2,555 in 2016. 

We need to pre­pare to meet the emo­tion­al de­mands of our own chil­dren and al­so the mi­grant chil­dren who may have a greater need.