GEISHA KOW­LESSAR ALON­ZO

The mi­grant labour sit­u­a­tion cur­rent­ly un­fold­ing in T&T bears strik­ing sim­i­lar­i­ties to the cri­sis in the Unit­ed States.

In both coun­tries, sud­den re­duc­tions in mi­grant labour have trig­gered eco­nom­ic strain, par­tic­u­lar­ly in sec­tors that re­ly heav­i­ly on low-wage, man­u­al work­ers.

In T&T, the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to slash work per­mits for Venezue­lan na­tion­als by over 80 per­cent—from 4,275 in 2024 to just 757 in 2025—has sent con­cern through in­dus­tries de­pen­dent on for­eign labour.

The ef­fects are al­ready be­ing felt across agri­cul­ture, hos­pi­tal­i­ty and re­tail, where the avail­abil­i­ty of Venezue­lan work­ers has de­clined.

On the ground, the im­pact is tan­gi­ble.

One farmer in cen­tral Trinidad, who has cul­ti­vat­ed sweet pota­toes and cas­sa­va for over two decades, now faces the grim prospect of lack of work­ers.

“Last year, I had a team of six Venezue­lan work­ers. This year, I have one,” he lament­ed adding, “My chil­dren don’t want to farm, and lo­cals aren’t lin­ing up for this kind of work.”

The re­tail sec­tor is al­so fac­ing prob­lems.

A small su­per­mar­ket in Diego Mar­tin re­port­ed a dras­tic re­duc­tion in mi­grant staff.

“We used to have a full team—Venezue­lan work­ers who were de­pend­able and fast. We now have six from about 20 work­ers. Most left to go back home be­cause they said the sit­u­a­tion is too un­sta­ble in Trinidad. With de­por­ta­tion or­ders loom­ing, they don’t know what kind of fu­ture they have here.”

Across the At­lantic, the Unit­ed States is fac­ing a sim­i­lar labour short­age, al­beit dri­ven by dif­fer­ent forces.

Height­ened im­mi­gra­tion en­force­ment and wide­spread fear of de­por­ta­tion have led to a mass ex­o­dus of un­doc­u­ment­ed work­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly from farms in Cal­i­for­nia’s Cen­tral Val­ley. The re­sult has been a sig­nif­i­cant dis­rup­tion in food pro­duc­tion and sup­ply chains.

To un­der­stand the roots of T&T’s mi­grant work­force, labour re­la­tions spe­cial­ist Trevor John­son re­called that in June 2019, the gov­ern­ment con­duct­ed a two-week reg­is­tra­tion ex­er­cise al­low­ing Venezue­lan na­tion­als—in­clud­ing those who en­tered il­le­gal­ly or over­stayed—to ap­ply for tem­po­rary sta­tus.

Near­ly 20,000 Venezue­lans, in­clud­ing chil­dren over 16, were reg­is­tered and grant­ed one-year work per­mits.

John­son em­pha­sised that Venezue­lan mi­grants have be­come a vi­tal source of af­ford­able and read­i­ly avail­able labour across a wide range of sec­tors: con­struc­tion, man­u­fac­tur­ing, agri­cul­ture, fish­ing, do­mes­tic work, land­scap­ing, hos­pi­tal­i­ty and even in­for­mal ser­vices such as car re­pairs and house­keep­ing.

This list, he not­ed, con­tin­ues to grow.

How­ev­er, their vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty has made them easy tar­gets for ex­ploita­tion.

“Most mi­grants re­ceive wages be­low the min­i­mum wage, work ex­tend­ed hours with­out over­time, and are de­nied ba­sic ben­e­fits like sick leave or paid va­ca­tion. They are of­ten dis­missed with­out no­tice and sub­ject­ed to ar­bi­trary pay cuts,” John­son ex­plained.

He added that the gov­ern­ment ap­pears to be sig­nalling a tougher stance on ir­reg­u­lar mi­gra­tion.

“There’s a grow­ing dis­com­fort—not just among mi­grants, but al­so with­in the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty. Many em­ploy­ers are qui­et­ly, and some not so qui­et­ly, lob­by­ing for a more prag­mat­ic ap­proach. These mi­grants are fill­ing roles that lo­cals have long been re­luc­tant to take on con­sis­tent­ly,” he said.

Sec­toral Im­pact: Agri­cul­ture and in­for­mal econ­o­my

For­mer chief labour of­fi­cer and in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions con­sul­tant Sabi­na Gomez echoed con­cerns, warn­ing that T&T’s agri­cul­tur­al and in­for­mal sec­tors could soon mir­ror the labour cri­sis seen in the US.

“Venezue­lans, Cubans, and oth­er mi­grant work­ers have proven to be dili­gent and de­pend­able. They are present on farms across the coun­try,” she said.

Gomez de­scribed agri­cul­ture as a “sleep­ing gi­ant” with un­tapped po­ten­tial for down­stream man­u­fac­tur­ing.

How­ev­er, the mass de­par­ture of mi­grant work­ers—who per­form jobs that na­tion­als of­ten avoid or take up in­con­sis­tent­ly—threat­ens to stall this po­ten­tial.

She, too, point­ed to the in­for­mal sec­tor, not­ing that busi­ness­es like car wash­es that re­ly on mi­grant labour could be at risk of col­lapse.

Tourism sec­tor high­lights work­force gaps

The tourism sec­tor is not im­mune to these chal­lenges.

Lisa Shandilya, found­ing mem­ber of the Tourism In­dus­try As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T and gen­er­al man­ag­er of The Chan­cel­lor Ho­tel, St Ann’s, high­light­ed a grow­ing cri­sis in the tourism sec­tor. “From ho­tels and restau­rants to an­cil­lary ser­vices, there is no short­age of job op­por­tu­ni­ties—but there is a crit­i­cal short­age of re­li­able, com­mit­ted labour,” she said.

Dri­ven by eco­nom­ic des­per­a­tion, many mi­grants bring a strong work eth­ic and com­mit­ment, help­ing to sta­bilise ser­vice qual­i­ty.

How­ev­er, Shandilya ac­knowl­edged the gov­ern­ment’s con­cerns about unchecked mi­gra­tion and its im­pli­ca­tions for na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty.

To ad­dress this, she pro­posed a sus­tain­able reg­u­la­to­ry mech­a­nism.

“Stake­hold­ers should be al­lowed to sub­mit a list of cur­rent­ly em­ployed, pos­i­tive­ly con­tribut­ing Venezue­lan staff. These work­ers could pay in­to Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Scheme (NIS) and Health Sur­charge, and in re­turn, be grant­ed tem­po­rary stay per­mits to en­sure con­ti­nu­ity in the tourism sec­tor,” she sug­gest­ed.

Shandilya fur­ther rec­om­mend­ed a per­for­mance-based work per­mit sys­tem with clear an­nu­al re­new­al cri­te­ria.

“This would al­low us to legal­ly and sus­tain­ably har­ness this com­mit­ted labour pool while giv­ing the Gov­ern­ment the tools to man­age se­cu­ri­ty and so­cial con­cerns,” she added.

The need for a bal­anced pol­i­cy

Build­ing on these pro­pos­als, econ­o­mist Dr Vaalmik­ki Ar­joon rec­om­mend­ed that to ef­fec­tive­ly bal­ance the com­plex dy­nam­ics of mi­gra­tion and labour mar­ket needs, T&T should adopt a more struc­tured, skills-based work per­mit pol­i­cy.

This ap­proach, com­mon­ly used in many de­vel­oped economies, would strate­gi­cal­ly align mi­grants’ qual­i­fi­ca­tions with na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment pri­or­i­ties.

In do­ing so, high­ly skilled pro­fes­sion­als—such as doc­tors, nurs­es, en­gi­neers, and ICT spe­cial­ists—could be placed in sec­tors ex­pe­ri­enc­ing crit­i­cal short­ages, un­der for­malised con­tracts and reg­u­lat­ed wage struc­tures.

Build­ing on this foun­da­tion, Ar­joon fur­ther sug­gest­ed that se­mi-skilled and low­er-skilled work­ers be chan­nelled in­to in­dus­tries that sup­port the coun­try’s di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion goals.

These sec­tors in­clude agri­cul­ture, agro-pro­cess­ing, man­u­fac­tur­ing, and con­struc­tion, where labour de­mand re­mains high and lo­cal par­tic­i­pa­tion has been wan­ing.

Such tar­get­ed place­ment would not on­ly ad­dress work­force gaps but al­so con­tribute to broad­er eco­nom­ic trans­for­ma­tion.

To en­sure the in­tegri­ty and ac­count­abil­i­ty of this sys­tem, Ar­joon em­pha­sised the need for com­pre­hen­sive reg­is­tra­tion and mon­i­tor­ing mech­a­nisms.

He al­so agreed that all for­mal­ly reg­is­tered mi­grant work­ers be re­quired to pay tax­es and con­tribute to the NIS.

More­over, to ad­dress se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns, the frame­work should in­cor­po­rate bio­met­ric reg­is­tra­tion, tam­per-proof work per­mit IDs, crim­i­nal record screen­ing with re­gion­al da­ta-shar­ing, ver­i­fied proof of ad­dress and em­ploy­er spon­sor­ship, pe­ri­od­ic in-per­son re­newals, and swift penal­ties for non-com­pli­ance.

Turn­ing to cur­rent trends, Ar­joon raised a crit­i­cal ques­tion: Is there a de­lib­er­ate pol­i­cy to re­duce the num­ber of work per­mits grant­ed to Venezue­lan mi­grants, or is the de­cline sim­ply a re­flec­tion of few­er in­di­vid­u­als re-reg­is­ter­ing each year un­der the Mi­grant Reg­is­tra­tion Frame­work (MRF)- the 2019 ini­tia­tive that reg­u­larised Venezue­lan na­tion­als and grant­ed them a tem­po­rary right to live and work legal­ly in T&T with­out need­ing a for­mal work per­mit?

Ar­joon stat­ed that the pol­i­cy re­quired an­nu­al re­newals, but each year re­newals steadi­ly de­clined, tak­ing the num­bers reg­is­tered from about 16,523 in 2019 to 13,800 in 2021, and fur­ther down to rough­ly 9,133 in 2022 and 7,000 in 2023.

This, he said, might pos­si­bly sug­gest that many of those ini­tial­ly reg­is­tered in 2019 ei­ther left the coun­try (sec­ondary mi­gra­tion), re­turned home, or sim­ply failed to re­new their sta­tus – a short­com­ing part­ly due to the ab­sence of strong mon­i­tor­ing and fol­low-up mech­a­nisms – rather than be­ing in­ten­tion­al­ly re­moved or de­nied work au­tho­ri­sa­tion.

De­spite these chal­lenges, Ar­joon un­der­scored the pos­i­tive im­pact Venezue­lan mi­grants have had on the lo­cal econ­o­my.

Many demon­strate high pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and a strong work eth­ic, par­tic­u­lar­ly in low-wage, ser­vice-ori­ent­ed sec­tors such as con­struc­tion, re­tail, do­mes­tic work and hos­pi­tal­i­ty, he said, adding that their in­te­gra­tion in­to these in­dus­tries has helped small busi­ness­es main­tain op­er­a­tions and man­age costs, es­pe­cial­ly wage ex­pens­es, as the in­flux of low-skilled labour has ex­ert­ed down­ward pres­sure on wage rates.

Be­yond labour mar­ket con­tri­bu­tions, mi­grant spend­ing al­so sup­ports lo­cal con­sump­tion, rental mar­kets, and small-scale re­tail trade, there­by adding mod­est­ly to GDP.

These eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits high­light the im­por­tance of thought­ful pol­i­cy de­sign that recog­nis­es both the chal­lenges and op­por­tu­ni­ties pre­sent­ed by mi­gra­tion.

In light of these re­al­i­ties, John­son al­so stressed that the gov­ern­ment now faces the com­plex task of craft­ing a com­pre­hen­sive mi­grant pol­i­cy—not just for Venezue­lans—that ad­dress­es hu­man­i­tar­i­an, eco­nom­ic, and le­gal di­men­sions.

He not­ed that many mi­grants have start­ed fam­i­lies in T&T, and as a UN mem­ber state, the coun­try is ob­lig­at­ed to up­hold in­ter­na­tion­al hu­man rights stan­dards.

Draw­ing lessons from oth­er coun­tries, John­son warned against rushed de­ci­sions.

He point­ed out that na­tions which de­port­ed large num­bers of un­doc­u­ment­ed mi­grants lat­er faced se­vere labour short­ages in crit­i­cal sec­tors like agri­cul­ture.

There­fore, he cau­tioned, any new pol­i­cy must be care­ful­ly con­sid­ered to avoid un­in­tend­ed con­se­quences that could un­der­mine both eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty and so­cial co­he­sion.