RAPHAEL JOHN-LALL

Econ­o­mists and a se­cu­ri­ty con­sul­tant are warn­ing that, de­spite changes to Venezuela’s lead­er­ship in re­cent times, il­le­gal mi­gra­tion from Venezuela to T&T will con­tin­ue.

Thou­sands of Venezue­lans in T&T con­tin­ue to work and send mon­ey to fam­i­ly back home.

In 2024, Venezue­lan eco­nom­ic con­sul­tan­cy Ecoanalíti­ca—a con­sult­ing firm that spe­cialis­es in eco­nom­ic and fi­nan­cial ad­vi­so­ry ser­vices—es­ti­mat­ed that re­mit­tances from the Venezue­lan di­as­po­ra glob­al­ly amount­ed to US$3 bil­lion, or near­ly three per cent of gross do­mes­tic prod­uct (GDP).

A Los An­ge­les Times ar­ti­cle in Jan­u­ary re­port­ed that stud­ies show that 80 per cent of Venezue­lans out­side the coun­try are not in­ter­est­ed in re­turn­ing home at the mo­ment.

De­spite the ab­duc­tion of Venezuela’s Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro by the Unit­ed States mil­i­tary in Jan­u­ary, there con­tin­ues to be a flow of il­le­gal mi­gra­tion from Venezuela in­to T&T and oth­er coun­tries.

While there had been ex­pec­ta­tions that po­lit­i­cal changes would cre­ate an en­vi­ron­ment that would al­low Venezue­lans to re­turn to their home­land, that has not yet been achieved.

Years of eco­nom­ic cri­sis have fu­elled il­le­gal mi­gra­tion to T&T from Venezuela’s north-east­ern states, such as Su­cre and Delta Amacuro, which are among Venezuela’s poor­est re­gions.

In an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian, econ­o­mist Dr Ronald Ramkissoon said there are many fac­tors in an econ­o­my that dri­ve mass mi­gra­tion.

“Im­mi­gra­tion from Venezuela is like­ly to fall in the long run but not in the short run. Mi­gra­tion from a coun­try does not on­ly de­pend on the lack of jobs in the home coun­try but al­so on liv­ing con­di­tions in that coun­try such as food prices, hous­ing con­di­tions and the de­gree of po­lit­i­cal free­dom. The ex­tent of il­le­gal mi­gra­tion al­so de­pends on the ef­fec­tive­ness of T&T’s bor­der con­trols,” he ex­plained.

He not­ed that many T&T na­tion­als have al­so mi­grat­ed in search of bet­ter eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ties in de­vel­oped coun­tries, and sim­i­lar fac­tors dri­ve peo­ple to leave their home coun­tries.

“It might stand to rea­son that the bet­ter the liv­ing con­di­tions in a par­tic­u­lar coun­try, the less like­ly the phe­nom­e­non of ‘brain drain’ is like­ly to pre­vail. How­ev­er, T&T and in­deed the Caribbean have ex­pe­ri­enced the ‘brain drain’ phe­nom­e­non even in the pres­ence of rel­a­tive­ly high stan­dards of liv­ing. High­ly ed­u­cat­ed per­sons leave for what is con­sid­ered even bet­ter liv­ing con­di­tions, less crime, high­er ed­u­ca­tion, strong fam­i­ly re­la­tions, among oth­er fac­tors. How­ev­er, it should be said that some­times the per­cep­tion of the so-called bet­ter life turns out to be an il­lu­sion,” he added.

Whether in T&T or Venezuela, he said mi­gra­tion would con­tin­ue as long as peo­ple are dis­sat­is­fied with stan­dards of liv­ing in strug­gling economies.

“Mi­gra­tion in­to and out of Trinidad and To­ba­go has al­ways ex­ist­ed. I be­lieve that there is not go­ing to be any end to it. We must learn to work with it and to bet­ter man­age the in­flows and out­flows,” Ramkissoon not­ed.

Econ­o­mist Dr An­tho­ny Gon­za­les al­so told the Busi­ness Guardian that Venezuela’s econ­o­my would take time to im­prove and warned against ex­pect­ing a sharp re­duc­tion in mi­grants ar­riv­ing on T&T’s shores in the fore­see­able fu­ture.

“In­vest­ments in oil and gas will take some years to bear fruit. If, as it seems, com­pa­nies are be­ing en­cour­aged to in­vest in Venezuela, then one could ex­pect that in about two years oil pro­duc­tion and ex­ports will sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­crease. That will have pos­i­tive mul­ti­pli­er ef­fects on the econ­o­my, cre­at­ing more jobs, forex, pri­vate busi­ness­es and gov­ern­ment rev­enue. In that sit­u­a­tion, few­er Venezue­lans are ex­pect­ed to mi­grate,” he said.

Giv­en these con­di­tions, Venezue­lans con­tin­ue to il­le­gal­ly cross T&T’s bor­ders in search of eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ties.

Last week, the T&T Coast Guard in­ter­cept­ed 13 Venezue­lan na­tion­als, in­clud­ing two in­fants, dur­ing rou­tine mar­itime pa­trols.

In an at­tempt to reg­u­larise il­le­gal mi­grants in T&T, Venezue­lans and oth­er na­tion­al­i­ties, the Gov­ern­ment has launched an ini­tia­tive to reg­is­ter all il­le­gal mi­grants in T&T.

At the end of the on­line reg­is­tra­tion pe­ri­od, the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty re­ceived 29,276 ap­pli­ca­tions, rep­re­sent­ing more than 60 na­tion­al­i­ties.

There con­tin­ue to be lo­cal re­ports of mi­grants, specif­i­cal­ly Venezue­lans, com­mit­ting bur­glar­ies, kid­nap­pings and oth­er vi­o­lent crimes.

The Busi­ness Guardian at­tempt­ed to reach Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der and sent a What­sApp mes­sage ask­ing whether there has been an in­crease or de­crease in il­le­gal ar­rivals from Venezuela since Jan­u­ary, but there was no re­sponse.

Venezuela’s Eco­nom­ic Re­al­i­ty

Venezuela, which was Latin Amer­i­ca’s fifth-largest econ­o­my for decades, lost 75 per cent of its GDP be­tween 2014 and 2020, plagued by po­lit­i­cal tur­moil and in­ter­na­tion­al sanc­tions against the gov­ern­ment.

De­spite past chal­lenges, the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment re­mains op­ti­mistic about the econ­o­my, pro­ject­ing dou­ble-dig­it GDP growth for 2026. While year-on-year in­fla­tion is around 600 per cent, Venezuela’s in­fla­tion rate has been falling since Jan­u­ary, ac­cord­ing to da­ta from the Cen­tral Bank of Venezuela.

The US gov­ern­ment is al­so op­ti­mistic and has en­cour­aged en­er­gy com­pa­nies to in­vest in Venezuela’s en­er­gy sec­tor.

How­ev­er, im­prov­ing the coun­try’s econ­o­my re­mains a ma­jor chal­lenge, as it still has a long way to go.

Lat­est da­ta re­leased by the Cen­tral Bank of Venezuela al­so showed that GDP is a mere 35 per cent of its 2013 lev­el.

Its na­tion­al bud­get for 2026 is US$20 bil­lion, an in­signif­i­cant fig­ure com­pared to neigh­bour­ing Colom­bia, whose 2026 bud­get is US$140 bil­lion.

Poor wages re­main one of the main rea­sons Venezue­lans have not yet re­turned home.

El País, a lead­ing Span­ish me­dia house, re­port­ed two weeks ago that Venezuela’s of­fi­cial min­i­mum wage—used to cal­cu­late an­nu­al so­cial ben­e­fits—is 160 bo­li­vars, bare­ly a few cents of a US dol­lar.

The gov­ern­ment com­pen­sates for this by of­fer­ing bonus­es that do not af­fect so­cial ben­e­fits (such as the “eco­nom­ic war bonus” or the “food bonus”), which av­er­age around US$180 per month, and refers to this as the “com­pre­hen­sive min­i­mum wage”, which may in­clude food bas­kets.

A Venezue­lan labour­er in the pri­vate sec­tor could earn around US$350 a month, while a skilled tech­ni­cian earns close to US$500 a month, and a man­ag­er or co­or­di­na­tor up to US$1,200.

Se­cu­ri­ty Risks

Re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty ex­pert Garvin Heer­ah al­so told the Busi­ness Guardian that the re­cent in­ter­cep­tion of Venezue­lan mi­grants by the T&T Coast Guard, in­clud­ing women and chil­dren, is an­oth­er re­minder that ir­reg­u­lar mi­gra­tion across the coun­try’s mar­itime bor­ders re­mains per­sis­tent, adap­tive, and deeply in­ter­twined with re­gion­al in­sta­bil­i­ty.

“De­spite re­cent geopo­lit­i­cal de­vel­op­ments in­volv­ing Venezuela, in­clud­ing shifts in po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship and re­newed in­ter­est from US and in­ter­na­tion­al oil in­vestors, there is no im­me­di­ate in­di­ca­tion that Trinidad and To­ba­go will see a rapid de­cline in mi­grant flows. In fact, from a se­cu­ri­ty stand­point, the ev­i­dence sug­gests that ir­reg­u­lar mi­gra­tion pres­sures are like­ly to re­main steady in the short to medi­um term, and could even in­crease un­der cer­tain con­di­tions,” he said.

Heer­ah al­so point­ed out that while there is emerg­ing op­ti­mism about eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery dri­ven by for­eign in­vest­ment in the oil sec­tor, such re­cov­ery would take years—not months—to sta­bilise liveli­hoods, re­build in­sti­tu­tions and re­store pub­lic con­fi­dence.

“Mi­gra­tion is not dri­ven sole­ly by macro­eco­nom­ic in­di­ca­tors; it is dri­ven by lived re­al­i­ties. Is­sues such as food se­cu­ri­ty, em­ploy­ment, health­care, gov­er­nance and per­son­al safe­ty re­main key push fac­tors. Even with po­ten­tial eco­nom­ic im­prove­ments, many Venezue­lans who have al­ready mi­grat­ed, or who are plan­ning to mi­grate, will con­tin­ue to seek sta­bil­i­ty else­where, par­tic­u­lar­ly in near­by ter­ri­to­ries,” he said.

Heer­ah stat­ed that T&T, by virtue of its ge­o­graph­ic prox­im­i­ty—just sev­en miles from Venezuela—re­mains a nat­ur­al des­ti­na­tion.

“But more im­por­tant­ly, it is per­ceived as a land of op­por­tu­ni­ty rel­a­tive to con­di­tions in Venezuela and even com­pared to oth­er parts of the re­gion. This per­cep­tion, com­bined with es­tab­lished mi­grant net­works, cre­ates a pow­er­ful pull fac­tor,” he added.