Registration deadline passes, but some migrants say they were left behind

RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­[email protected]

With Trinidad and To­ba­go’s mi­grant reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion ex­er­cise now of­fi­cial­ly closed, some mi­grants who say they at­tempt­ed to com­ply with the process are plead­ing for a fi­nal op­por­tu­ni­ty to be reg­is­tered.

Among them is Venezue­lan na­tion­al Zudelys Qui­ja­da, who has been liv­ing in Trinidad for the past four years. While her hus­band, Emilio Her­nan­dez, and their 10-year-old son, Je­sus, suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed the reg­is­tra­tion process, Qui­ja­da said she nev­er re­ceived an ap­point­ment de­spite reg­is­ter­ing on­line short­ly af­ter the ex­er­cise opened.

Speak­ing through a trans­la­tor, Qui­ja­da said she be­lieved she had done every­thing re­quired.

“I was one of the first peo­ple to reg­is­ter. In view of the fact that I did not re­ceive my ap­point­ment, I went with my hus­band, who did re­ceive the ap­point­ment. He was able to reg­is­ter the chil­dren, but I could not reg­is­ter my­self.”

She said of­fi­cials lat­er checked her reg­is­tra­tion num­ber and dis­cov­ered her in­for­ma­tion had not been up­loaded in­to the sys­tem.

“They ver­i­fied that my da­ta was not loaded in­to the sys­tem. In view of that, I was left with­out reg­is­ter­ing.”

Now, Qui­ja­da is ap­peal­ing to au­thor­i­ties for an­oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ty to be­come reg­u­larised.

“I would like peo­ple to take in­to ac­count that we are do­ing a good job in Trinidad and give us the op­por­tu­ni­ty to reg­is­ter,” she said.

Her ex­pe­ri­ence is among what mi­grant ad­vo­cate Ang­ie Ram­nar­ine be­lieves could be sev­er­al hun­dred cas­es in­volv­ing mi­grants who at­tempt­ed to par­tic­i­pate in the ex­er­cise but were un­able to com­plete the process due to tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties, missed ap­point­ments, trans­porta­tion chal­lenges and oth­er lo­gis­ti­cal is­sues.

Ram­nar­ine said she wel­comed the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to ex­pand the reg­is­tra­tion dri­ve to all mi­grants when it was first an­nounced.

“I was re­al­ly elat­ed by the ini­tia­tive when it was first an­nounced and even more elat­ed that it was go­ing to in­clude all mi­grants,” she said.

While prais­ing the on­line reg­is­tra­tion sys­tem and in­ter­view process, Ram­nar­ine not­ed that some mi­grants who reg­is­tered nev­er re­ceived in­ter­view dates, while oth­ers were un­able to at­tend sched­uled ap­point­ments due to ill­ness, trans­port dif­fi­cul­ties or com­mu­ni­ca­tion chal­lenges.

“We had hoped there would be a sup­ple­men­tary in­ter­view process to take in­to ac­count those mi­grants who could not make it on the giv­en date,” she said.

Point­ing to Qui­ja­da’s case, Ram­nar­ine said some mi­grants fol­lowed every re­quire­ment but still fell through the cracks.

“Her hus­band and chil­dren got through the on­line process and they’ve al­ready had their in­ter­view, but Zudelys has not re­ceived any date for her in­ter­view.”

Al­though she be­lieves the num­ber af­fect­ed is rel­a­tive­ly small, Ram­nar­ine ar­gued that every mi­grant should be ac­count­ed for if the ex­er­cise is to achieve its ob­jec­tive.

“If we are re­al­ly se­ri­ous about da­ta col­lec­tion, I don’t think that any­body should be left out.”

She es­ti­mat­ed that few­er than two per cent of the mi­grants she reg­u­lar­ly in­ter­acts with may have been un­able to com­plete the process, but said that could still rep­re­sent sev­er­al hun­dred peo­ple.

Ram­nar­ine is now call­ing for a brief ex­ten­sion or sup­ple­men­tary process to ac­com­mo­date such cas­es.

“It doesn’t even have to be a month be­cause I think we know who the peo­ple are. I be­lieve if we gave an­oth­er two weeks for every­body who would have been touched by the process.”

She al­so point­ed to chal­lenges faced by mi­grants liv­ing in re­mote ar­eas, in­clud­ing un­re­li­able in­ter­net ac­cess and dif­fi­cul­ties trav­el­ling to in­ter­view cen­tres. Some, she said, on­ly saw ap­point­ment no­ti­fi­ca­tions af­ter their sched­uled in­ter­view dates had al­ready passed.

De­spite these con­cerns, Ram­nar­ine re­ject­ed sug­ges­tions that mi­grants had been de­lib­er­ate­ly ex­clud­ed.

“I re­al­ly don’t think so. Every­body was giv­en an equal chance and those were some of the pos­i­tive as­pects of it.”

In­stead, she be­lieves the sheer vol­ume of ap­pli­ca­tions may have over­whelmed the sys­tem.

“I got a feel­ing that they were very hard-pressed with the num­bers that they had to deal with.”

On­line reg­is­tra­tion for the mi­grant reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion ex­er­cise opened in Jan­u­ary and closed on Feb­ru­ary 25. The process then moved to manda­to­ry se­cu­ri­ty screen­ings, fin­ger­print­ing and in­ter­views at venues in­clud­ing the Ato Boldon, Hase­ly Craw­ford and Lar­ry Gomes sta­di­ums be­fore con­clud­ing at the end of May.

Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der had pre­vi­ous­ly warned that un­doc­u­ment­ed mi­grants who failed to reg­is­ter by the dead­line would face de­por­ta­tion.

How­ev­er, when con­tact­ed, Alexan­der said mi­grants who can prove they at­tempt­ed to reg­is­ter will still be giv­en an op­por­tu­ni­ty to com­plete the process.

“We will try to ac­com­mo­date those who can pro­duce ev­i­dence that they at­tempt­ed to up­load their da­ta to the web­site or those who have down­loaded doc­u­men­ta­tion or oth­er proof show­ing they did not get through,” Alexan­der said.

He re­it­er­at­ed that mi­grants who fail to reg­is­ter and can­not pro­vide ev­i­dence of at­tempt­ing to do so will face de­por­ta­tion. At the end of May, the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty re­ceived 29,276 to­tal ap­pli­ca­tions. This fig­ure in­cludes all na­tion­al­i­ties, with 23,342 from Venezuela.