Raphael John-Lall

Chair­man of the Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers, Vivek Char­ran is op­ti­mistic that Venezue­lan mi­grants, and mi­grants in gen­er­al, will con­tin­ue to con­tribute to the busi­ness sec­tor and the econ­o­my.

In an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian, Char­ran spoke about the role of mi­grants as work­ers in busi­ness­es, their role as con­sumers and he al­so gave his views on whether mi­grant work­ers should pay in­to the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Sys­tem (NIS) as some ad­vo­cates are now ar­gu­ing should be al­lowed.

“They con­tin­ue to make a con­tri­bu­tion to the busi­ness sec­tor. I would al­so say, I al­so see them mak­ing a con­tri­bu­tion as they are buy­ing a lot lo­cal­ly. I do not think the Venezue­lans have cred­it cards and are spend­ing forex. I think all of the Venezue­lan pur­chas­es are done lo­cal­ly. If you be­lieve that there are 60,000 of them here, and maybe more, then their con­sumer pow­er is not in­signif­i­cant,” Char­ran said.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has said that her mi­grant pol­i­cy, which is not yet com­plet­ed, will not be one of mass de­por­ta­tion of mi­grants.

Two weeks ago, speak­ing with the me­dia at bMo­bile’s Fu­ture Lead­ers In­tern­ship En­gage­ment func­tion at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann’s, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said de­tails on the pol­i­cy will be forth­com­ing.

In 2019, over 16,000 Venezue­lans were reg­is­tered to work legal­ly in T&T.

The In­ter-agency Co­or­di­na­tion Plat­form for Refugees and Mi­grants (R4V) is made up by over 200 or­gan­i­sa­tions—in­clud­ing Unit­ed Na­tions agen­cies, civ­il so­ci­ety, faith-based or­ga­ni­za­tions and NGOs, among oth­ers—that co­or­di­nate their ef­forts un­der Venezuela’s Refugee and Mi­grant Re­sponse Plan (RM­RP) in 17 coun­tries in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean.

Ac­cord­ing to da­ta from this group, in 2024 there were 29,509 Venezue­lans refugees and mi­grants in T&T.

Venezue­lan work­ers are now ubiq­ui­tous through­out T&T and can be seen work­ing in restau­rants, on con­struc­tion sites, at hair dress­ing sa­lons, in shops and min­i­marts and oth­er sec­tors of the econ­o­my.

Many are now even open­ing their own busi­ness­es sell­ing food, in the cos­met­ics in­dus­try as well as of­fer­ings in the con­struc­tion in­dus­try.

Char­ran gave ex­am­ples of dif­fer­ent sec­tors of the econ­o­my in which mi­grant work­ers have been mak­ing their con­tri­bu­tion.

“Some­times the lan­guage bar­ri­er could be a hin­drance, es­pe­cial­ly when it comes to cus­tomer re­la­tions. Where they find them­selves in the re­tail sec­tor, it is usu­al­ly on the back­end in term of ware­hous­es. I al­so see that those that have done well and that can speak the lan­guage have found them­selves work­ing in the ser­vice in­dus­try like spas, nails and those types of things. You al­so find a lot of guys work­ing in the hair sa­lons and that kind of things. You all see them work­ing at food stalls and green­gro­cers.”

When de­vel­op­ing its mi­grant pol­i­cy, he called on the Gov­ern­ment to de­vel­op an ef­fec­tive work pol­i­cy for mi­grants.

“With a pol­i­cy in place, it then makes it eas­i­er for the younger men to get in­volved in the for­mal em­ploy­ment sec­tor. Mi­grant women are al­so par­tic­u­lar­ly vul­ner­a­ble. A work pol­i­cy would al­so mean that they could find them­selves in work, which means that they will not be work­ing in less le­git­i­mate places.”

Com­ment­ing on crit­i­cisms that mi­grants dri­ve down wages in the labour mar­ket, there­by dis­tort­ing it, Char­ran said while it may have been true when mi­grants start­ed to flood T&T, the labour mar­ket has now worked it­self out.

Be­cause of a new equi­lib­ri­um in the labour mar­ket, he ar­gued that some mi­grants are ac­tu­al­ly now turn­ing down jobs with wages they think are too low.

“When you look at a lot of Venezue­lans, some of them have been liv­ing and work­ing here for more than a decade. I think we have passed the stage where any­one is be­ing ex­ploit­ed. At the end of the day, if a wage is of­fered to some­one, it is up­on them to ac­cept the wage or not. As far as I know, many of them are work­ing for min­i­mum wage and be­yond. I ac­tu­al­ly think that a lot of them are ac­tu­al­ly turn­ing down work that is be­low the min­i­mum wage.”

De­spite the pos­i­tive con­tri­bu­tion that Venezue­lans are mak­ing to the world of busi­ness and econ­o­my as a whole, Char­ran warned that there are vul­ner­a­ble young Venezue­lan men as well as oth­er dis­en­fran­chised Latin Amer­i­can youth in T&T, who if they are not em­ployed, can po­ten­tial­ly play a neg­a­tive role.

“They can be draft­ed or rad­i­calised in­to a life of crime and gangs. It is crit­i­cal that we get the young men in­to em­ploy­ment as if they do not work then how do they earn mon­ey? If they try to earn mon­ey by get­ting in­to a life of crime then that will not be good. There is al­ways the spec­tre of crime com­ing from Venezuela to T&T as well.”

Em­ploy­ment ben­e­fits

Char­ran said he be­lieves Venezue­lans and oth­er mi­grants should not be al­lowed to pay in­to the NIS be­cause they are not cit­i­zens.

“If they start to pay NIS then it puts them on the same foot­ing with cit­i­zens of T&T and that is a prob­lem. The whole NIS sys­tem is that you are pay­ing con­tri­bu­tions and af­ter mak­ing x amount of con­tri­bu­tions, it is in essence a sort of re­tire­ment ben­e­fit. First­ly, that is re­served for cit­i­zens. Sec­ond­ly, if they pay in­to the sys­tem, who knows if they pay in­to the sys­tem and Venezuela gets bet­ter and they re­turn home?”

At the same time, he said that all work­ers should have “fun­da­men­tal rights.”

“They should get paid sick leave. They need to work un­der a safe en­vi­ron­ment.”

He al­so point­ed out that Venezue­lans are al­ready pay­ing tax­es in­di­rect­ly.

“They are al­ready pay­ing tax­es through VAT and pur­chas­es and that au­to­mat­i­cal­ly goes back to the Gov­ern­ment.”

Mi­grant labour

Econ­o­mist Dr An­tho­ny Gon­za­les, who has done sev­er­al stud­ies of Venezue­lan mi­grants in the past, told the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian that mi­grants have played an im­por­tant part in T&T’s econ­o­my for the last 10 years.

“Well so far, the Venezue­lan mi­grant flow to T&T has been man­age­able. T&T needs mi­grant labour as its fer­til­i­ty rate is too low for fu­ture eco­nom­ic growth. The Venezue­lan mi­grants have been able to se­cure jobs here main­ly in con­struc­tion, the hos­pi­tal­i­ty in­dus­try, agri­cul­ture and man­u­fac­tur­ing. All the lat­ter sec­tors need labour to ex­pand. So, the move is a good one.”