Raphael John-Lall

Busi­ness lead­ers be­lieve that the lat­est reg­is­tra­tion dri­ve to doc­u­ment all il­le­gal im­mi­grants in T&T from dif­fer­ent parts of the world will help boost the busi­ness sec­tor and econ­o­my in gen­er­al.

Chair­man of the Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers, Vivek Char­ran, told the Busi­ness Guardian that the lat­est reg­is­tra­tion process, the first ma­jor one since 2019, to reg­is­ter how many mi­grants live and work in T&T makes prac­ti­cal busi­ness sense.

“I am hap­py. It is bet­ter to be reg­is­tered from a se­cu­ri­ty per­spec­tive as most have fled ei­ther a ter­ri­ble sit­u­a­tion in Venezuela or Cu­ba and have been as­sim­i­lat­ed in­to the labour force here at many dif­fer­ent lev­els.”

He al­so rec­om­mend­ed that these new­ly reg­is­tered mi­grants con­tribute to the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance (NIS), health sur­charge and oth­er statu­to­ry de­duc­tions.

“Af­ter reg­is­tra­tion, if they are per­mit­ted to work legal­ly, they should be made to con­tribute to health sur­charge and al­so NIS from their salaries be­cause they would al­so be us­ing our health sys­tem. It would put them on par with our cit­i­zens who are al­so in the job mar­ket. If em­ploy­ing mi­grants is cheap­er be­cause you do not have to pay tax­es then our cit­i­zens lose out so let’s make it an even play­ing field.”

Ac­cord­ing to news re­ports, over the last few weeks, Venezue­lans na­tion­als have been call­ing on lo­cal au­thor­i­ties to give them the op­por­tu­ni­ty to have dri­ver’s li­cences to be used for busi­ness pur­pos­es and to reg­is­ter as taxi dri­vers.

Char­ran said he has no prob­lems with mi­grants be­ing is­sued with dri­ver’s per­mits es­pe­cial­ly to en­gage in busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ties.

“Yes, why not as in oth­er parts of the world from Colom­bia to Amer­i­ca to the UK, mi­grants are used for a large part of the taxi and uber ser­vice. Legal­ly be­ing able to work should al­so mean bring­ing then in the tax net so the bur­den could be shared. But oth­er than NIS and Health Sur­charge, many of the ser­vice providers in Trinidad and To­ba­go even those in trans­port say taxi dri­vers etc are not taxed so the bur­den falls hard up­on the busi­ness sec­tor and SME’s in the pri­vate sec­tor.”

He al­so said that gen­er­al­ly mi­grant work­ers are treat­ed well and many are ac­tu­al­ly paid over the min­i­mum wage.

The Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty has said the Mi­grant Reg­is­tra­tion Frame­work is be­ing im­ple­ment­ed in three phas­es as part of a process to reg­is­ter mi­grants.

Phase one be­gan on Jan­u­ary 26, 2026, and end­ed on Feb­ru­ary 25, 2026. This phase in­volved an on­line ap­pli­ca­tion process dur­ing which ap­pli­ca­tions were sub­mit­ted, re­viewed and ap­point­ments as­signed.

The Min­istry said book­ing and con­fir­ma­tion of ap­point­ments re­main on­go­ing. At the end of the on­line reg­is­tra­tion pe­ri­od, the min­istry re­ceived 29,276 ap­pli­ca­tions rep­re­sent­ing more than 60 na­tion­al­i­ties.

This reg­is­tra­tion process is tak­ing place against the back­drop of hu­man traf­fick­ing cas­es and al­le­ga­tions that some lo­cal busi­ness­es are ex­ploit­ing mi­grants.

Last week, Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed that based on in­for­ma­tion from the Counter Traf­fick­ing Unit (CTU) of the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty, a lo­cal busi­ness­man was ar­rest­ed and a to­tal of 11 in­di­vid­u­als were dis­cov­ered at a lo­ca­tion in Rio Claro. Fol­low­ing ini­tial screen­ing and in­ves­ti­ga­tion by CTU of­fi­cers, four in­di­vid­u­als were con­firmed as Vic­tims of Traf­fick­ing (VoTs).

In Feb­ru­ary, Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der lament­ed that there are many busi­ness­es that use mi­grant labour, as they do not pay any tax­es, and these busi­ness­es should not be dis­suad­ing mi­grants from reg­is­ter­ing.

In Feb­ru­ary, Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed that Labour Min­is­ter Leroy Bap­tiste urged mi­grants and work­ers to re­port cas­es of work­place ex­ploita­tion, af­ter a reg­is­tered

Venezue­lan mi­grant, Suyin Escalona Salazar, al­leged she was dis­missed and de­nied wages fol­low­ing three months of work at a Gulf City restau­rant.

Pres­i­dent of the Bar­keep­ers As­so­ci­a­tion Satesh Moonasar told the Busi­ness Guardian that mi­grants have con­tributed to fill­ing a void in the labour mar­ket over the years and he wel­comes the Gov­ern­ment reg­is­tra­tion dri­ve.

There are over 600 mem­bers in his as­so­ci­a­tion.

Thou­sands of Venezue­lans have been em­ployed in bars through­out the coun­try over the past ten years.

“We are hap­py to see the reg­is­tra­tion of mi­grants, be­cause they have con­tributed a lot to so­ci­ety in terms of labour in Trinidad and To­ba­go over the past cou­ple of years. There are a lot of dif­fer­ent sec­tors in the coun­try that have a short­age of labour and use main­ly the Venezue­lan mi­grants. So, we are hap­py to see that they are do­ing a prop­er reg­is­tra­tion for these mi­grants,” he said.

While he ad­mit­ted that there is some “ex­ploita­tion” of mi­grants in T&T, he de­fend­ed most busi­ness own­ers say­ing in his sec­tor, busi­ness own­ers pay mi­grants the min­i­mum wage or even more.

“Well, what I could say from any in­dus­try, there are per­sons who do take ad­van­tage of the sit­u­a­tion. So, I can at­test for my mem­bers and my­self that the Venezue­lan mi­grants that work for us are paid over min­i­mum wage.”

He al­so sup­ports the idea for reg­is­tered mi­grants to pay NIS and oth­er con­tri­bu­tions that T&T na­tion­als are sup­posed to make and made it clear that lo­cals must al­so be made to pay their fair share of tax­es too.

“My per­son­al feel­ing is that every­body, whether it be mi­grants or Trinida­di­ans, every­body from every sec­tor or every part of the pop­u­la­tion should pay NIS, health sur­charge and PAYE. Now the re­al­i­ty in T&T is that on­ly about 30 to 40 per cent of the work­ing pop­u­la­tion pays NIS, health sur­charge or PAYE. That is be­cause all the rest of per­sons are ei­ther self-em­ployed, un­doc­u­ment­ed, what­ev­er the case might be. So, to tar­get just the mi­grants and im­mi­grants say­ing that they need to pay this, I find it a very un­fair ques­tion.”

Econ­o­mist Dr Ronald Ramkissoon told the Busi­ness Guardian that it is an “ap­pro­pri­ate move” to reg­is­ter mi­grants.

“If done well, then we should have in­for­ma­tion on their char­ac­ter, ed­u­ca­tion and oth­er ba­sic in­for­ma­tion. This can al­low us to ap­pro­pri­ate­ly guide them in­to va­cant job po­si­tions that we would have al­ready iden­ti­fied. Mi­grants do con­tribute to the econ­o­my; here and typ­i­cal­ly wher­ev­er they go such as in the Unit­ed States.”

He al­so be­lieves that they should be al­lowed to con­tribute to the NIS.

“It is on­ly right that they are paid ap­pro­pri­ate­ly for the par­tic­u­lar job and as such must con­tribute to the rel­e­vant de­duc­tions such as NIS, health sur­charge etc. Busi­ness­es must be en­cour­aged not be ex­ploita­tive in their hir­ing prac­tices whether in re­spect of na­tion­als or to mi­grants.”

Fi­nal­ly, he said the Gov­ern­ment must take ac­tion to im­prove the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic growth.

“This coun­try must aim for sus­tain­able and in­clu­sive growth. Ul­ti­mate­ly, growth in mean­ing­ful em­ploy­ment de­pends on growth in in­vest­ment which in turn con­tributes to growth in Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct (GDP). It is my view that we are far from this coun­try’s po­ten­tial on most fronts.”