Gail Alexan­der

More Venezue­lans want to get le­gal sta­tus in T&T.

Five lo­cal en­ti­ties and sev­er­al for­eign ones rep­re­sent­ing mi­grant caus­es have called for Gov­ern­ment to con­sid­er re­open­ing the reg­is­tra­tion process for Venezue­lans and to stop de­port­ing Venezue­lans.

The call came yes­ter­day via an open let­ter to Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley.

A spokesman said five of the groups are based in T&T rep­re­sent­ing Venezue­lans: Caribbean Cen­tre for Hu­man Rights, Ca­ri­MAN, La Ca­sita, His­pan­ic Cul­tur­al Cen­tre, CEDAW Com­mit­tee of T&T, Ryu Dan Do­jo Em­pow­er­ment Foun­da­tion.

The oth­ers com­prise lo­cal and re­gion­al groups which lo­cal en­ti­ties say sup­port their cause.

The let­ter stat­ed their con­cern about the re­port­ed de­por­ta­tion of 93 Venezue­lans on Sep­tem­ber 18.

The let­ter stat­ed, “The de­por­ta­tion of asy­lum seek­ers runs counter to the ba­sic in­ter­na­tion­al law prin­ci­ple of non-re­foul­ment. As your gov­ern­ment may be aware, just two days be­fore this most re­cent de­por­ta­tion, a UN-ap­point­ed fact-find­ing mis­sion on Venezuela found rea­son­able grounds to be­lieve au­thor­i­ties un­der the com­mand of Nicolás Maduro have com­mit­ted grave hu­man rights vi­o­la­tions that could amount to crimes against hu­man­i­ty.”

“While we un­der­stand T&T, like all gov­ern­ments, is strug­gling to re­spond to the eco­nom­ic and pub­lic health im­pli­ca­tions of COVID-19, we’re deeply con­cerned just weeks ago your gov­ern­ment al­so re­port­ed­ly de­port­ed 165 Venezue­lans.”

The groups claimed this was in vi­o­la­tion of T&T’s oblig­a­tions un­der in­ter­na­tion­al law. They were al­so dis­turbed by Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young’s warn­ing that peo­ple who helped mi­grants and refugees could face crim­i­nal­iza­tion.

The let­ter stat­ed that those de­port­ed to Venezuela are placed in quar­an­tine cen­tres, many of which are un­der po­lice and mil­i­tary con­trol and the UN had in­di­cat­ed lead­ers of some of these places “may be re­spon­si­ble for crimes against hu­man­i­ty.”

The let­ter not­ed that T&T’s amnesty reg­is­tra­tion process last year “went some way to pro­vid­ing Venezue­lans with in­ter­na­tion­al pro­tec­tion and was an im­por­tant op­por­tu­ni­ty for many Venezue­lans to start re-build­ing a new life in safe­ty and to con­tribute mean­ing­ful­ly to T&T.”

T&T ac­com­mo­dat­ed 16,523 Venezue­lans then and their amnesty was ex­tend­ed to De­cem­ber.

How­ev­er, more have con­tin­ued to en­ter T&T il­le­gal­ly. Some de­tained have had the COVID-19 virus and have dis­ap­peared in­to T&T when at­tor­neys get them re­leased, Gov­ern­ment re­cent­ly said.

The groups’ let­ter how­ev­er not­ed, “In light of the dan­ger­ous con­di­tions in Venezuela, we ask you to ur­gent­ly con­sid­er re-open­ing the reg­is­tra­tion process to en­sure Venezue­lans in T&T have ac­cess to le­gal sta­tus so they can con­tribute the many skills they have. We al­so urge you to en­sure T&T com­plies with its non­re­foule­ment oblig­a­tions, by pro­tect­ing asy­lum seek­ers and oth­ers from de­por­ta­tion.”

A spokesman for the let­ter senders in­sist­ed T&T need­ed to con­form to UN con­ven­tions it signed on refugee is­sues. But they ad­mit­ted to be­ing un­aware Young said re­cent­ly he’d start­ed eye­ing refugee law. They al­so called for gov­ern­ment agen­cies to is­sue in­for­ma­tion in Span­ish but they al­so agreed that net­works in T&T help­ing Venezue­lans should al­so guide them on mask-wear­ing, COVID-19 pro­to­cols and T&T’s laws in gen­er­al.