Undocumented migrants can begin registering on Monday—Alexander

KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter/Pro­duc­er

kay-marie.fletch­er

@guardian.co.tt

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der has an­nounced that the new reg­is­tra­tion process for un­doc­u­ment­ed mi­grants will be­gin on Mon­day.

Dur­ing a post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing on Thurs­day, the min­is­ter ini­tial­ly stat­ed that the process of reg­is­ter­ing to work legal­ly in Trinidad and To­ba­go would start on Fri­day. How­ev­er, he in­formed Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that there has been a change in the date.

Alexan­der said, “Present­ly, we are chang­ing the date. As we speak, be­cause of the ef­fi­cien­cy of my staff at the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty, to­geth­er with oth­er sup­port­ing agen­cies like the Im­mi­gra­tion De­part­ment, we are mov­ing for­ward to Mon­day the 26th.” The reg­is­tra­tion card will be valid un­til De­cem­ber 31, 2026.

Asked what hap­pens when the per­mit ex­pires, he added, “It’s a re­new­al process.”

Adult ap­pli­cants will be re­quired to pay $700, and re­quired doc­u­ments in­clude birth records, pass­port de­tails, na­tion­al ID (coun­try of ori­gin), par­ents’ in­for­ma­tion, spouse de­tails, ed­u­ca­tion his­to­ry, em­ploy­ment his­to­ry, vac­ci­na­tion records, and trav­el de­tails for T&T. Those who fail to reg­is­ter will face im­me­di­ate de­por­ta­tion, ac­cord­ing to the min­is­ter.

Dur­ing a post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing on Thurs­day, Alexan­der said that the mi­grant reg­is­tra­tion process was pro­ject­ed to cost tax­pay­ers $1 mil­lion, sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er than the $5 mil­lion spent un­der the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion. How­ev­er, Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Dr Amery Browne has ex­pressed con­cern that the $700 mi­grant reg­is­tra­tion fee may be yet an­oth­er “rev­enue-gen­er­at­ing strat­e­gy” by the Gov­ern­ment. In his view, the fee is too high.

He said, “The fees are ex­tra­or­di­nary, and it ap­pears to be just a con­tin­u­a­tion of their ap­proach, which is to look for re­sources in the pock­ets of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go and those in our coun­try, whether they are cit­i­zens or now mi­grants. That’s the rev­enue-gen­er­at­ing strat­e­gy of this cur­rent Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress. Find the mon­ey in peo­ple’s pock­ets.”

Browne al­so con­demned the Gov­ern­ment for fail­ing to ef­fec­tive­ly com­mu­ni­cate its plans for mi­grants with the rest of the coun­try.

He added, “Once again, the Gov­ern­ment has not com­mu­ni­cat­ed with the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go on its agen­da with these mi­grants. It seems to be a very ad hoc ap­proach, which is typ­i­cal of this cur­rent UNC.”

Venezue­lan mi­gra­tion soars in T&T

... From 10,000 in 2014 to near­ly 45,000 in 2023

* In 2014, un­der the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship, the Na­tion­al Pol­i­cy to Ad­dress Refugee and Asy­lum Mat­ters re­port­ed that 110,012 un­doc­u­ment­ed im­mi­grants from 16 coun­tries were liv­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go. That fig­ure in­clud­ed 10,574 peo­ple from Venezuela. Over the next five years, the num­ber of Venezue­lan mi­grants sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­creased.

* Un­der the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion in 2019, 16,500 mi­grants reg­is­tered for the Mi­grant Reg­is­tra­tion Frame­work (MRF). As of Oc­to­ber 2023, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 7,000 of the orig­i­nal­ly reg­is­tered 16,500 Venezue­lans re­newed their per­mits.

* As of No­vem­ber 2023, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 44,800 Venezue­lan mi­grants, refugees, and asy­lum seek­ers were liv­ing in T&T.

This num­ber rep­re­sent­ed the high­est per capi­ta pop­u­la­tion of Venezue­lans in the Caribbean as of 2024, with the is­lands hav­ing a to­tal pop­u­la­tion of 1.5 mil­lion ac­cord­ing to ACAPS, a non-prof­it, non-gov­ern­men­tal project that pro­vides in­de­pen­dent hu­man­i­tar­i­an analy­sis.

2014-Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship mi­grant list­ing

Venezuela 10,574

Guyana 25,884

Ja­maica 19,500

St Vin­cent 9,606

Bar­ba­dos 7,169

Grena­da 6,947

Colom­bia 6,388

Chi­na 4,593

Philip­pines 4,437

St Lu­cia 4,391

In­dia 3,651

Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic 2,256

Suri­name 1,944

Cu­ba 1,434

Nige­ria 1,071

Bangladesh 167

2019-PNM

Venezuela 16,500