Gail Alexan­der

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Vish­nu Dhan­paul has warned that the Con­sti­tu­tion (Amend­ment) (Cit­i­zen­ship) Bill, 2025, could be ex­ploit­ed to abuse T&T’s cit­i­zen­ship and pass­ports—in­clud­ing fa­cil­i­tat­ing the in­fil­tra­tion of Venezue­lan “sleep­er cells.”

Speak­ing dur­ing Wednes­day’s Sen­ate de­bate, Dhan­paul said sev­er­al claus­es of the bill were “too wide” and ques­tioned what lay be­hind them. While ac­knowl­edg­ing the Prime Min­is­ter’s as­sur­ances of strict safe­guards to pro­tect na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, he urged con­sid­er­a­tion of oth­er sce­nar­ios.

“One of the coun­tries where there are many grand­par­ents and grand­chil­dren con­nect­ed to T&T is Venezuela,” he said.

In a hy­po­thet­i­cal ex­am­ple, Dhan­paul said it would not be dif­fi­cult for a Venezue­lan ter­ror­ist group to re­cruit a grand­child with lin­eage ties to T&T to gain cit­i­zen­ship, a pass­port and le­gal en­try.

“It’s not far-fetched be­cause these new shady ‘cit­i­zens’ can dis­ap­pear and blend in­to the pop­u­la­tion and cre­ate a se­cu­ri­ty night­mare with­in their sleep­er cells—some­thing the pop­u­la­tion needs to know,” he added.

Dhan­paul al­so ques­tioned the Gov­ern­ment’s claim that the bill would in­crease re­mit­tances, say­ing many cit­i­zens al­ready send mon­ey out of T&T to rel­a­tives abroad.

Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor Philip Alexan­der dis­missed the con­cerns as un­found­ed. He said tens of thou­sands of Venezue­lans had been le­git­i­mate­ly al­lowed in­to the coun­try un­der the last ad­min­is­tra­tion with­out such fears ma­te­ri­al­is­ing.

“They could be det­o­nat­ing them­selves every day. What’s to stop them? They don’t need this bill. They’re here al­ready and there was no vet­ting. They were here, they came in, how­ev­er they got in, and they gave them ID cards. What’s to stop them det­o­nat­ing them­selves?” he asked.

Alexan­der ar­gued that the bill does not open flood­gates but mere­ly widens the door­way for those with le­git­i­mate an­ces­tral ties. He stressed that it does not grant au­to­mat­ic cit­i­zen­ship and main­tains le­gal ver­i­fi­ca­tion and lin­eage re­quire­ments.

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dr Mar­lene Attzs, who did not sup­port the bill, raised a dif­fer­ent set of con­cerns. She said if the Gov­ern­ment’s goal was fair­ness, then eq­ui­ty de­mand­ed a path for Venezue­lan chil­dren who are blocked from class­rooms due to bu­reau­crat­ic hur­dles. She al­so urged the Sen­ate to con­sid­er glob­al mi­gra­tion trends, par­tic­u­lar­ly de­por­ta­tions from larg­er states.

“With in­ten­si­fied de­por­ta­tions from the US and else­where, grand­chil­dren qual­i­fied could ar­rive in sig­nif­i­cant num­bers … The ques­tion is whether we’re ready. Do our schools have the ca­pac­i­ty, do our clin­ics have staff and do our hous­ing mar­kets have space to ac­com­mo­date them?” she asked.

Attzs called for strong guardrails to pre­vent the im­por­ta­tion of “crim­i­nal tal­ent” in­to T&T so­ci­ety. Not­ing that the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion is al­ready strained, she stressed the need for clar­i­ty on vet­ting, da­ta-shar­ing with Im­mi­gra­tion, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and over­seas mis­sions, and re­sourc­ing plans to han­dle what could be hun­dreds or thou­sands of lin­eage-based ap­pli­ca­tions.

“These as­pects are the dif­fer­ence be­tween a promise on pa­per and what ac­tu­al­ly works,” she said.