Dear Editor,
I refer to a report in yesterday’s SN. You reported that 14 Venezuelans appeared before Magistrate Ann McLennan who ruled that they would be fined $10,000 and then deported. These were our Venezuelan neighbours in search of survival because of the plight of their country. Something is wrong with that picture.
Not with the magistrate’s actions. She has to act within the prescriptions of the law. The criminal lawyers would best know whether she acted with as much mercy as was at her disposal. The part that tells me that something is wrong is this part: “One of them said that he thought it was okay to come to Guyana to work, since there are so many Guyanese freely travelling over to Venezuela to work.”
Last time I heard there were 50,000 Guyanese in Venezuela. This figure is decades old. Many of these (though not all) went over to Venezuela when times were hard in Guyana. I know what happens to people including Guyanese when they are caught illegally entering any country. This is under normal circumstances. These are not normal times in Venezuela.
It is true that successive Venezuelan governments have appointed themselves our enemy. The Venezuelan people have not. In fact, we have had the benefit of the Venezuelan people’s largesse in terms of favourable fuel and rice deals. We know this was the smile of the crocodile but that is no concern of ours when our neighbours are in such a plight. In fact, we should have worked out some kind of policy on how we will treat these neighbours while they are in such an embarrassing state.
This is going to be a very difficult decision for Guyana and we are in no position to accept even 1/100th of Venezuela’s population. But this cannot be the treatment we mete out to persons who come across looking for survival. These are called economic refugees. In case we haven’t realized it yet, civilized countries all over the world when faced with neighbours in such situations develop a policy for some kind of temporary assistance.
I am pleading with our government to get busy and develop a policy fast as it looks like we have not yet done so. Those words are ringing in my ears: “One of the women broke down in tears as she told the court that due to the economic crisis in her homeland, all she wanted to do is to provide for her children and coming to Guyana was her only option.”
What a rude awakening from your neighbour.
Yours faithfully,
Frederick W A Collins
