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Sunday, July 6, 2025

PM: T&T will not have open-door policy for migrants

by

Geisha Kowlessar
1724 days ago
20201016
Some of the Venezuelan migrants arrested on July 16 by T&T Coast Guard sit outside the Cedros Security Complex.

Some of the Venezuelan migrants arrested on July 16 by T&T Coast Guard sit outside the Cedros Security Complex.

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says “un­der no cir­cum­stances” will Trinidad and To­ba­go im­ple­ment an open-door pol­i­cy to mi­grants.

Row­ley made the com­ment yes­ter­day dur­ing a vir­tu­al con­fer­ence host­ed by the As­so­ci­a­tion of Amer­i­can Cham­bers of Com­merce in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean (AAC­CLA) themed “Fore­cast for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean.”

“As a small is­land with lim­it­ed re­sources, we can­not have an open-door pol­i­cy where per­sons come in their tens of thou­sands at will,” Row­ley said as he ad­dressed is­sue of mi­grants and the re­gion’s ap­proach to solv­ing the cri­sis.

The Prime Min­is­ter said this coun­try con­tin­ues to con­trol its bor­ders and the num­ber of mi­grants that it can man­age best, giv­en the cur­rent cir­cum­stances T&T faces.

How­ev­er, Row­ley said there still re­mains “a flow of il­le­gal mi­grants in­to T&T,” warn­ing that they will be repa­tri­at­ed if caught.

He not­ed, how­ev­er, there are there a lot of Venezue­lans in T&T con­tribut­ing to the coun­try’s labour force.

“But there is a down­side to it, where there are some who may re­quire as­sis­tance which we may not be able to pro­vide,” Row­ley added.

Row­ley said giv­en the hard­ship in Venezuela, this coun­try had ini­tial­ly re­ceived a small por­tion of mi­grants from that coun­try and ac­com­mo­dat­ed them with a help­ing hand.

“Ini­tial­ly it was a small flow, which be­came a larg­er flow, whom we did reg­is­ter and al­lowed them to func­tion with­out re­stric­tions,” Row­ley said.

Not­ing that just over 16,000 Venezue­lans were reg­is­tered to work legal­ly here dur­ing a Gov­ern­ment ex­er­cise last year, Row­ley said for small is­land like T&T that fig­ure was a lot. He added, how­ev­er, that most of the reg­is­tered Venezue­lans are gain­ful­ly em­ployed and pro­vide skills to this coun­try.

“And while it is not as com­fort­able as they would like and we would like be­cause of the ex­pe­ri­ences we are hav­ing with COVID, we have opened our doors and we are a hu­mane neigh­bour and our neigh­bourly re­la­tion with Venezuela con­tin­ues,” the PM re­it­er­at­ed.

The PM’s com­ment came against the back­drop of re­cent crit­i­cism by sev­er­al en­ti­ties, in­clud­ing Amnesty In­ter­na­tion­al, Hu­man Rights Watch, Refugees In­ter­na­tion­al, Caribbean Cen­tre for Hu­man Rights and the CEDAW Com­mit­tee of Trinidad and To­ba­go, over T&T’s con­tin­ued repa­tri­a­tion of Venezue­lans caught in T&T il­le­gal­ly.


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