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FROM ALL sides, pressure is mounting on Venezuelan migrants.
In the US, the Supreme Court on May 19 allowed the Trump administration to strip at least 340,000 of temporary protected status, reportedly the largest such dismantling of amnesty in modern American history.
The humanitarian crisis these people have fled – characterised by widespread hunger and malnutrition, the rise of armed gangs, crumbling infrastructure and deep political repression – has only worsened. On May 25, the Nicolas Maduro regime claimed victory in regional and legislative elections, compounding the fraudulence of last year’s widely discredited presidential poll.
In TT, thousands of Venezuelans today face deep uncertainty. The April 28 general election result has done little to clarify their fate.
The PNM government, which had at one stage allowed at least 35,300 to live and work here under a renewable permit scheme, under Stuart Young agreed to co-operate with Trump administration officials’ efforts to tackle the so-called threat of the Tren de Aragua gang, an invasive threat used to justify the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act. But the US intelligence community, in a declassified memo published in the American press on May 5, assessed the gang to have no ties with the Maduro regime.
The newly elected UNC administration, meanwhile, is yet to address robustly the future of the Venezuelan migrant scheme amid a rising tide of rhetoric against migrants. Yet, deafening silence will soon become unsustainable given the prospect of a full-blown conflagration.
In an interview with this newspaper on May 20, Dr Anthony Gonzales, the former head of the Institute for International Relations at UWI, St Augustine, noted the Supreme Court ruling alone will pile more pressure on TT.
“It is a cause for concern,” he said. “Venezuela is not in a good position to receive these deportees.”
This country’s treatment of migrants is not just an economic issue. Nor is it just a political one. It is an ethical issue that demands a strong moral compass.
Unfortunately, that clarity has been lacking in the years since 2015, even as the total number of people fleeing our closest neighbour has risen to at least 7.9 million in one of the largest humanitarian displacements the world has ever seen.
The state dragged its feet with the admission of thousands of children into schools; some were killed during reckless refoulement activities in open seas. The economic advantages generated by a supplemented workforce have been conveniently ignored. Venezuelan migrants have been broadly brushed as criminals, even as some continue to succumb to local crime. But soon, with this crisis deepening, officials might have little choice but to come face to face with the moral implications of their own policymaking, or lack thereof.
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