Carisa Lee & Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Hu­man rights ac­tivist Sofia Figueroa-Leon is wel­com­ing Gov­ern­ment’s an­nounce­ment that a new mi­grant pol­i­cy will be rolled out. But she in­sists that it needs to be done hu­mane­ly and holis­ti­cal­ly, un­like the ones be­fore.

“One of them told me to­day, ‘Sofia we are the new Jew­ish per­se­cut­ed by the Nazis and it’s all due to the Venezue­lan regime that any­where any Venezue­lan goes, be them hon­est, hard­work­ing they are all thrown in the same bag if there is a bad ap­ple’,” said Figueroa-Leon, as she shared a con­ver­sa­tion she had with a mi­grant yes­ter­day.

Dur­ing the post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing on Thurs­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar claimed some Venezue­lans may be in­volved in drug and hu­man traf­fick­ing but have doc­u­men­ta­tion to live and work in T&T.

“Clear­ly, they have duped the sys­tem,” the Prime Min­is­ter said.

Speak­ing via Zoom to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Figueroa-Leon said there are steps which can be tak­en to im­prove the reg­is­tra­tion of mi­grants, such as thor­ough back­ground checks and re­quest­ing at least one valid form of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion.

The ac­tivist added that few­er Venezue­lans are mi­grat­ing to T&T and as such, any new pol­i­cy should be to reg­u­larise those here il­le­gal­ly.

“Ac­cord­ing to in­for­ma­tion that comes out of the UN­HCR, on­ly 200 mi­grants are com­ing in­to the coun­try com­pared to 1,000-plus in the past ... so they are not many and the num­bers con­tin­ue to dwin­dle,” she said.

Hu­man rights ad­vo­cate Denise Pitch­er al­so wel­comed Gov­ern­ment’s pro­pos­al. She be­lieves it will pro­vide greater pro­tec­tion for mi­grants, asy­lum seek­ers and refugees.

“Le­gal­is­ing them means that they won’t live in the shad­ows,” she said.

The co­or­di­na­tor of the Min­istry for In­te­gral Hu­man De­vel­op­ment at the Liv­ing Wa­ter Com­mu­ni­ty, Hulsie Bhag­gan, al­so called on Gov­ern­ment to work with the mi­grant groups in this coun­try.

“What might be a good idea is for Gov­ern­ment to col­lab­o­rate with the NGOs who are in­volved with mi­grants and see how we can work to­geth­er to en­sure that this prob­lem doesn’t be­come one that is hit­ting us in the face all the time,” said the for­mer MP.

Mean­while, on Thurs­day, the UN­HCR an­nounced the clo­sure of its of­fice in T&T on Au­gust 31 due to fi­nan­cial con­straints.

While the UN­HCR will no longer be reg­is­ter­ing new asy­lum seek­ers in the coun­try, its lo­cal part­ners, in­clud­ing La Ca­sita His­pan­ic Cul­tur­al Cen­tre in Ari­ma and the Caribbean Cen­tre for Hu­man Rights, will main­tain sup­port op­er­a­tions, with over­sight from the Pana­ma of­fice.

La Ca­sita man­ag­ing di­rec­tor An­dreina Briceño Ven­tu­ra-Brown de­scribed the clo­sure as a “se­vere blow” to the refugee and mi­grant com­mu­ni­ty. She urged Gov­ern­ment to es­tab­lish a na­tion­al reg­is­tra­tion and pro­tec­tion sys­tem that meets in­ter­na­tion­al oblig­a­tions and en­sures ba­sic rights and ser­vices are ac­ces­si­ble.

“La Ca­sita reaf­firms its com­mit­ment to a hu­mane, com­mu­ni­ty-based, and cul­tur­al­ly sen­si­tive ap­proach,” Briceño Ven­tu­ra-Brown said.

She al­so called for greater col­lab­o­ra­tion among civ­il so­ci­ety, in­ter­na­tion­al agen­cies, and stake­hold­ers to en­sure no one is left be­hind.