Activists call for extension of migrant registration process

RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­[email protected]

Ac­tivists and mi­grant ad­vo­cates are call­ing on the gov­ern­ment to ex­tend the on­go­ing mi­grant reg­is­tra­tion process, warn­ing that many in­dige­nous mi­grants — par­tic­u­lar­ly mem­bers of the Warao com­mu­ni­ty are at risk of be­ing left out due to a lack of doc­u­men­ta­tion and lim­it­ed ac­cess to in­for­ma­tion.

As the fi­nal day of on­line reg­is­tra­tion came to a close, al­most 100 in­dige­nous mi­grants gath­ered in the Moru­ga Great Hall to com­plete their on­line reg­is­tra­tion, with more trav­el­ling from South Trinidad and as far as Ari­ma.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Grand Chief of the First Peo­ples’ Sov­er­eign Na­tions in Trinidad and To­ba­go, Er­ic Lewis, said the ex­er­cise was crit­i­cal be­cause many in­dige­nous mi­grants do not pos­sess ba­sic iden­ti­fi­ca­tion doc­u­ments.

“Some of them have no form of ID and no birth cer­tifi­cates. Some don’t even know their ex­act date of birth,” Lewis said. “The em­bassy in­di­cat­ed they would as­sist with prepar­ing Venezue­lan doc­u­ments so they can be prop­er­ly reg­is­tered here in Trinidad.”

Lewis es­ti­mates that close to 200 in­dige­nous mi­grants live in the Moru­ga area, al­though many have moved to oth­er parts of the coun­try for work. He said since the reg­is­tra­tion dri­ve be­gan, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 150 adults have been as­sist­ed, along with an es­ti­mat­ed 40 to 50 chil­dren.

He ac­knowl­edged that while ef­forts have been made to reach peo­ple, a short ex­ten­sion — pos­si­bly one to two weeks — would al­low those who were un­aware of the process or un­able to gath­er doc­u­ments in time to com­ply.

“Not every­one is on so­cial me­dia or fol­lows the news. When you think about an in­dige­nous com­mu­ni­ty, many sim­ply didn’t know reg­is­tra­tion was hap­pen­ing,” he said.

Among the or­gan­i­sa­tions as­sist­ing mi­grants on the ground were rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Unit­ed Na­tions sys­tem, in­clud­ing the UNICEF Of­fice for the East­ern Caribbean Area, vol­un­teers, the Venezue­lan Em­bassy and La Ca­sita His­pan­ic Cul­tur­al Cen­ter.

Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor of La Ca­sita, An­driena Briceno Ven­tu­ra-Brown, said hun­dreds of mi­grants have passed through their out­reach ef­forts in Moru­ga, Ica­cos and oth­er com­mu­ni­ties.

She de­scribed wide­spread con­fu­sion and fear among some mi­grants, par­tic­u­lar­ly those with de­por­ta­tion or sep­a­ra­tion or­ders.

“Some peo­ple are afraid to come for­ward. They are afraid of be­ing re-vic­timised or de­tained af­ter the process fin­ish­es,” she said.

Ven­tu­ra-Brown is al­so call­ing for an ex­ten­sion of one to two weeks and greater di­rect en­gage­ment be­tween Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials and in­dige­nous lead­ers to clar­i­fy the ob­jec­tives of the reg­is­tra­tion ex­er­cise.

“We need to speak the same lan­guage — not just Eng­lish and Span­ish — but clear­ly ex­plain the mean­ing and pur­pose of this process so peo­ple un­der­stand what it means for them,” she said.

She al­so urged em­ploy­ers to co­op­er­ate in pro­vid­ing job let­ters re­quired for reg­is­tra­tion, not­ing that some mi­grants have re­port­ed dif­fi­cul­ty ob­tain­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion from work­places.

Mean­while, with the fi­nal hours of reg­is­tra­tion un­der­way, com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers and pri­vate cit­i­zens al­so stepped in to help. Among them was busi­ness­man Valmi­ki Ram­s­ingh, who spon­sored reg­is­tra­tion fees for two mi­grants. Singh said it broke his heart to see so many Warao chil­dren in the Moru­ga re­gion. He en­cour­aged the pub­lic to come out and sup­port vul­ner­a­ble in­dige­nous fam­i­lies to help them get out of pover­ty.

Grand Chief Er­ic Lewis helps the Warao peo­ple to reg­is­ter as mi­grant reg­is­tra­tion came to a close on Wednes­day.