Trinidad implements new visa policy for Venezuelans

(Trinidad Guardian) From Mon­day, Venezue­lans seek­ing to en­ter T&T will have to get a visa as the Gov­ern­ment an­nounced the new mea­sure to pre­vent the free flow of im­mi­grants in­to this coun­try.

Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young made the an­nounce­ment at a me­dia brief­ing at the close of the two-week reg­is­tra­tion process which end­ed at 5 pm on Fri­day.

He said over 15,000 Venezue­lans were reg­is­tered at three cen­tres—Queen’s Park Oval, in Port-of-Spain, Achie­vors Ban­quet Hall, in San Fer­nan­do and Car­o­line Build­ing, in To­ba­go.

The Min­ster said from his in­for­ma­tion all the peo­ple wait­ing to be reg­is­tered were ac­com­mo­dat­ed but the sit­u­a­tion in San Fer­nan­do and To­ba­go was in to­tal con­trast to his state­ments. Told by re­porters that the sit­u­a­tion was not as he de­scribed, the Min­is­ter said that was the in­for­ma­tion he had.

“We have com­plet­ed the reg­is­tra­tion process as we had said we would, we stuck to it. There were ab­solute­ly no in­ci­dents or in­juries to any­one dur­ing the two-week process.”

Young claimed there no crowds of mi­grants wait­ing to be reg­is­tered by the cut-off time, but rather per­sons who were “ring-fenced” and would have been processed last night.

He said, “The sig­nif­i­cance of that is it shows the suc­cess of this reg­is­tra­tion process and the ac­cu­ra­cy of it.”

“This reg­is­tra­tion process was a well thought out and im­ple­ment­ed process that is now a suc­cess, al­so al­lowed to gath­er in­tel­li­gence,” he added.

In San Fer­nan­do, hun­dreds were turned away out­side Achie­vors Ban­quet Hall af­ter po­lice cor­doned off the line short­ly af­ter 5 pm. Those with on­line reg­is­tra­tion doc­u­ments they were lat­er told by an of­fi­cial from the reg­is­tra­tion cen­tre to vis­it the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion next week to com­plete the process.

By night­fall, the group dis­persed, many of them miss­ing out the chance of ben­e­fit­ing from the amnesty which would have al­lowed them to live and work in this coun­try. Ear­li­er, the at­mos­phere was chaot­ic and tense as Venezue­lans were not sure what was hap­pen­ing and were try­ing to get in­for­ma­tion as what was go­ing to hap­pen to them as the cut off time was al­most up­on them.

Cal­iz Puer­to said they had or­gan­ised about five lists among them­selves which they were pass­ing on to the of­fi­cials to try to en­sure or­der and dis­ci­pline in the line.

She said each list had about 2,000 plus names. How­ev­er, that col­lapsed when the cut off time was ex­tend­ed by an hour and im­mi­grants be­gan rush­ing, hop­ing to get a place.

Po­lice of­fi­cers, sol­diers and mem­bers of the Air Guard stood guard to en­sure law and or­der. There were sev­er­al at­tempts to jump the line, caus­ing some to protest.

Around 6 pm law en­force­ment of­fi­cers stopped any­one else from join­ing the line. An of­fi­cial in­volved in the reg­is­tra­tion process came out about 15 min­utes lat­er and of­fi­cial­ly an­nounced that reg­is­tra­tion was closed.

Speak­ing in Span­ish, she in­formed them that those with the on­line reg­is­tra­tion forms to vis­it the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion from Mon­day to com­plete the process. When asked about the peo­ple who have no forms, the of­fi­cial said she was not giv­en any in­for­ma­tion about them. This left many im­mi­grants in fear that the po­lice would ar­rest them.

In To­ba­go close to 600 im­mi­grants were ush­ered to Port Mall where they were lat­er told that they would have to spend the night and will be processed on Sat­ur­day.

In Port-of-Spain, there were no im­mi­grants wait­ing in the line when the venue closed reg­is­tra­tion at 5 pm but there were about 300 in­side the venue still to be processed.

Speak­ing at a brief­ing at the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, in Port-of-Spain, the Min­is­ter said he had signed an or­der giv­ing ef­fect to the new visa re­quire­ment.

“Those visas will be is­sued out of Port-of-Spain via an ap­pli­ca­tion process that will take place out of our func­tion­ing em­bassy in Cara­cas.”

“On­ly Venezue­lans who will be al­lowed to en­ter our ports of en­try legal­ly are those to whom we is­sue visas,” he said.

Young said ad­di­tion­al dis­cus­sions are to held re­lat­ing to this lat­est pol­i­cy de­ci­sion—which pre­vi­ous­ly al­lowed per­sons to en­ter T&T and re­main for a 90-day pe­ri­od.

He warned that those who did not come for­ward to reg­is­ter will now be sub­ject to the laws of T&T when they are held and will be de­port­ed.

The Min­is­ter said de­tails on the num­ber of im­mi­grants who were processed dur­ing the two-week reg­is­tra­tion will be pro­vid­ed at a lat­er date.

The Min­is­ter said dur­ing the ex­er­cise the Po­lice Ser­vice was able to in­ter­ro­gate im­mi­grants and gath­er valu­able in­for­ma­tion to as­sist of­fi­cials mov­ing for­ward.

Young de­nounced the crit­i­cisms and mis­in­for­ma­tion he said had been cir­cu­lat­ed to, “mis­lead the world at large about our bor­der sit­u­a­tion.”

He de­nounced state­ments by the Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar who claimed that T&T coast­line was be­ing in­vad­ed by Venezue­lan im­mi­grants, adding that the Coast Guard had been able to turn back sev­er­al boat­loads of mi­grants in the past two weeks.

He al­so ac­cused the Op­po­si­tion of in­cit­ing peo­ple to protest the pres­ence of the Venezue­lan mi­grants, re­fer­ring to a protest ac­tion out­side the Oval on Thurs­day night.