Trinidad PM: Volume of Venezuelans will become a burden

(Trinidad Guardian) Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says that Trinidad and To­ba­go can­not be the so­lu­tion for mil­lions of Venezue­lans who are flee­ing the coun­try and that there will come a time when the vol­ume of Venezue­lans com­ing here will be­come a bur­den.

He made the re­mark at yester­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia con­fer­ence. The prime min­is­ter said the first pri­or­i­ty of the gov­ern­ment is the wel­fare of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

He told the me­dia con­fer­ence that while Trinidad and To­ba­go is at­tempt­ing to keep its doors open, it will not be able to cope with a large mi­gra­tion of Venezue­lans.

“In­ter­na­tion­al agen­cies, many of them with dif­fer­ent agen­das to our in­ter­est in Trinidad and To­ba­go, will not en­cour­age us in­to con­vert­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go, this lit­tle is­land na­tion in the mouth of the Orinoco, in­to any refugee camp for the larg­er Venezue­lan pub­lic,” he said.

Dr Row­ley added: “To pro­tect the in­ter­est of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go we will have to lim­it our ex­po­sure to the fall­out in Venezuela.”

He said one way of do­ing so is to con­tin­ue the 90-day lim­it al­lowed for Venezue­lans com­ing in­to the coun­try.

How­ev­er, he is warn­ing that Trinidad and To­ba­go might have to en­sure that the mi­gra­tion of Venezue­lans to this coun­try, stops.

“There comes a time when the vol­ume and the pres­ence of these eco­nom­ic mi­grants in Trinidad and To­ba­go will threat­en the qual­i­ty of life of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go and it falls to us to pro­tect our­selves from that,” he said.

He said the gov­ern­ment is not naive to the fact that crim­i­nal el­e­ments are al­so at­tempt­ing to ex­ploit the gen­eros­i­ty of this coun­try in al­low­ing Venezue­lans in.

Dr Row­ley said he will chair a meet­ing of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil today to ad­dress ma­jor con­cerns re­lat­ed to that.

He said the reg­is­tra­tion process which be­gins on May 31, will help the au­thor­i­ties to know how many are here, where they are and who they are.

“If you en­gage in crim­i­nal con­duct of any kind, we will de­port you be­cause you are our guests,” he said.

Mean­while, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young says that the gov­ern­ment did not play a role in the de­ci­sion to grant su­per­vi­sion or­ders to Venezue­lan na­tion­als found in Pa­lo Seco on Wednes­day.

Close to 100 Venezue­lans were found in a house in a forest­ed area and were tak­en to Siparia for pro­cess­ing.

Im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers al­lowed the Venezue­lans to go free on su­per­vi­sion or­ders, un­til the end of Ju­ly.

Min­is­ter Young said that he could not say on what grounds the Im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials act­ed.

“I can’t say what was the de­ci­sion tak­en by the Im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers,” Young said, adding, “I can tell you that the gov­ern­ment did not par­tic­i­pate in that de­ci­sion.”

Min­is­ter Young said the might have had to do with the space avail­able for hold­ing Venezue­lan mi­grants.

“You have to un­der­stand there are lim­it­ed fa­cil­i­ties for hold­ing per­sons and that is some­thing we are go­ing to be work­ing on, and I think they just took a de­ci­sion on the ground there that if they re­lease them on su­per­vi­sion or­ders – and I was told that peo­ple are hold­ing to the terms of the su­per­vi­sion or­ders, so they are ac­tu­al­ly turn­ing up when they are sup­posed and re­port­ing in etc – that was a de­ci­sion tak­en by the Im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cer who was in charge yes­ter­day,” he said.

He said he did not have in­for­ma­tion on where they were to­day.