Vashist Per­sad, 28, is a na­tion­al schol­ar­ship win­ner who is among thou­sands of T&T na­tion­als strand­ed abroad.

He is in New York City where he says, “We’re es­sen­tial­ly refugees and many of us are be­com­ing home­less, re­quir­ing fi­nan­cial aid, be­com­ing sick, and un­der­go­ing tremen­dous psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­tress.”

Per­sad spoke to Guardian Me­dia re­spond­ing to ques­tions about how he end­ed up be­ing strand­ed in New York and his ef­forts thus far to re­turn home.

Where were you when the lock­down hap­pened?

I am a Na­tion­al Schol­ar­ship Win­ner, hav­ing com­plet­ed un­der­grad­u­ate stud­ies in med­i­cine and now spe­cial­is­ing in Ob­stet­rics and Gy­nae­col­o­gy in New York, since 2016, on a J1 Visa, with the bless­ings of the Min­istry of Health, Trinidad. I was fin­ish­ing my last year of med­ical spe­cial­i­sa­tion in New York when the pan­dem­ic hit peak here and have now com­plet­ed my spe­cial­i­sa­tion in May 2020. My J1 visa is now ex­pired.

Why didn’t you re­turn home be­fore the bor­ders closed?

When the lock­down hap­pened, I was still in train­ing and close to the end of my pro­gramme, so com­ing back to Trinidad would have meant drop­ping out. At the time, no one thought the bor­der lock­down was al­so go­ing to be this long. Vir­tu­al­ly all coun­tries, in­clud­ing the Caribbean is­lands, have repa­tri­at­ed it’s peo­ples, ex­cept Trinidad.

How long have you been strand­ed?

I fin­ished in May—so I’ve been strand­ed for four months now.

How many at­tempts have you made to get an ex­emp­tion to re­turn home?

I’ve emailed the trav­el ex­emp­tions peo­ple at the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty now four times. I’ve al­so tried call­ing the Trinidad Con­sulate in NY in­nu­mer­able times, with­out much help.

Have you per­son­al­ly writ­ten to the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty or the Prime Min­is­ter about your plight? If so did you get a re­sponse?

I have not di­rect­ly ad­dressed the Ho­n­ourable Mr Stu­art Young or Dr Kei­th Row­ley di­rect­ly—is that even pos­si­ble? Can I do it now? There is no of­fi­cial av­enue to do this. In Trinidad, my rel­a­tives have been try­ing to con­tact vir­tu­al­ly any­one who might vague­ly have a link to the min­istries but no one seems to be able to help.

How do you feel about be­ing un­able to re­turn home?

I feel com­plete­ly aban­doned and de­spon­dent at this point. It’s like they don’t even care. At the last news con­fer­ence on Sep­tem­ber 12, the is­sue was not even ad­dressed by ei­ther the prime min­is­ter nor the press. “To­geth­er we as­pire, to­geth­er we achieve” I was taught to say in pri­ma­ry school. I’ve got to say, it doesn’t feel like we’re “to­geth­er” in any­thing right now. I’m in New York alone—my fam­i­ly, my fi­ancée are home and I would love to see them soon. I al­so am not al­lowed to work in the US, so I have no (le­gal) way of get­ting any kind of in­come to help with my ex­pens­es. I’m liv­ing on sav­ings that are quick­ly run­ning out. This must be the on­ly coun­try in the world where na­tion­als are re­quired to get an ex­emp­tion to re­turn home. Is that even le­gal? As a Trinida­di­an in the US, I can trav­el to any coun­try in the world ex­cept to Trinidad. Even Bar­ba­dos has pub­lished it’s guide­lines for trav­el in­to Bar­ba­dos since Ju­ly.

How do they think gov­ern­ment has man­aged the sit­u­a­tion with re­gard to strand­ed na­tion­als?

I think the Gov­ern­ment is try­ing in their own way, but I do not think they have thought it through. Es­pe­cial­ly as a med­ical, I feel like many of the poli­cies are not sus­tain­able and quite frankly, non­sen­si­cal. Trinidad is now con­sid­ered a “high risk” coun­try, so lock­ing the bor­ders makes no sense. It’s al­most like they act in the mo­ment with­out a thought for what hap­pens in the short term and long term. The biggest frus­tra­tion for me, is the lack of in­for­ma­tion. The gov­ern­ment has not put forth a clear ac­tion plan go­ing for­ward that we can dis­cuss—we seem to be sim­ply await­ing the whims and fan­cies of the “pow­ers that be.” Those of us on the out­side are hear­ing sto­ries of peo­ple get­ting on­to flights but all our in­for­ma­tion is word of mouth, we don’t know how those peo­ple got se­lect­ed to go home, or any clear time­line of when we will get se­lect­ed to go home.

Liv­ing in lim­bo like this, day to day just wait­ing to hear some­thing, it’s been re­al­ly hard. Fur­ther­more, in lieu of bring­ing us back home, our gov­ern­ment and con­sulate has not bro­kered any­thing with the gov­ern­ments of the coun­tries that we’re stay­ing in—it’s been left up to us on an in­di­vid­ual ba­sis to keep ap­ply­ing and re-ap­ply­ing for (of­ten ex­pen­sive) visa ex­ten­sions. As these things ex­pire, there is re­al fear in the com­mu­ni­ty that the at­ten­tions of groups like ICE will be turned on­to us, know­ing their his­to­ry of treat­ing il­le­gal aliens.

I have worked in New York when this was the epi­cen­tre of COVID in the World, my hos­pi­tal was con­vert­ed to a “COVID hos­pi­tal’ and as a gy­nae­col­o­gist, I served in the COVID ICUs that my hos­pi­tal had be­come. I was in­volved in plan­ning and ex­e­cu­tion when this whole sce­nario was un­fold­ing, when much less was known. Now that much more is known, I won­der if the of­fi­cials in Trinidad have been pay­ing at­ten­tion.

Are you pre­pared to pay your own air­fare to re­turn to Trinidad? Is it that all they want the gov­ern­ment to do is to grant them ex­emp­tions to re­turn home?

Yes. For most of us, we need the ex­emp­tion and then we can glad­ly pay for a flight. Most of us prob­a­bly can­not af­ford to char­ter a pri­vate jet di­rect­ly to Trinidad though. And the longer I stay in the US and the more mon­ey I have to spend on rent, health­care and liv­ing ex­pens­es, the clos­er I come to be­com­ing bank­rupt.

What kind of con­di­tions are you liv­ing un­der at this time as op­posed to if you were in your own home?

I got some­what lucky, as I was able to stay with a fam­i­ly friend whose room­mate left for the sum­mer. How­ev­er, I am soon be evict­ed and now look­ing at oth­er liv­ing arrange­ments. In ad­di­tion, I’ve had to re­new my J1 visa now two times, each time get­ting one month ex­ten­sions. The cost of this is US$367 for the visa and a lit­tle over US$600 for health in­sur­ance per month (as re­quired by a J1 visa hold­er). On top of this I have to pay rent and food, and I’m not even al­lowed to work. Back at home, I would be stay­ing with my par­ents in my old bed­room. No rent, with a job and, oh right, le­gal cit­i­zen sta­tus.

Are you pre­pared to un­der­go quar­an­tine and oth­er re­stric­tions which may be im­posed by the gov­ern­ment when you re­turn?

Ab­solute­ly. I’ve seen how se­ri­ous this dis­ease is and I think we are all will­ing to do the re­spon­si­ble thing. I think most peo­ple are will­ing to quar­an­tine at home if the state fa­cil­i­ties are full. COVID-19 is not go­ing any­where soon, so we have to adapt but clos­ing the bor­ders as is now pro­posed is not the an­swer as peo­ple are suf­fer­ing on both sides and not just for health rea­sons.