Xenophobic hot air | Editorial

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Virtually plagiarising from American president-elect Donald Trump, Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar is now promising to deport illegal Venezuelan migrants “by any means necessary”.

Mr Trump successfully campaigned on securing America’s borders, promising “mass deportations”, because immigration was a major concern for the American electorate. In Trinidad and Tobago, however, such rhetoric is unlikely to win votes.

Mrs Persad-Bissessar used the recent murder of a senior citizen by three “Spanish-speaking” men to launch her attack on Venezuelan migrants. “If the Venezuelan migrant community do not get their act in order and desist from engaging in criminal conduct...my incoming government will take aggressive action against all illegal Venezuelan migrants,” she declared.

This is xenophobic hot air. A 2023 report from the United Nations on Caribbean gangs noted that one large Venezuelan gang called the Deltano Liberation Front has members embedded in Trinidadian gangs, some smaller groups have migrated to Trinidad, and tensions exist between Venezuelan and Trinidadian criminals. But, while crime worries everybody, the country was riven by murder and mayhem from locally-grown criminals long before the mass exodus from Venezuela started in 2015.

The UN report lists 186 gangs with around 1,700 members, the major ones being Muslim City, Rasta City, Sixx, and smaller ones called Boombay Gang, Police, and Tyson. The Opposition Leader has said little about any of them or the communities these gangs operate from.

The influx of Venezuelans may have worsened our crime situation, but that issue has much deeper, long-planted roots. Certainly, if there is a crime problem related to Venezuelans, the authorities must deal with it firmly. However, as Deputy Commissioner of Police Junior Benjamin told the Express in a phone interview published yesterday, “We will have to examine the incidents, and see what the correlations are and what the data is telling us. But to say outright that there is a correlation...we will have to examine the data, and go on from there.”

This should be the policy approach of any responsible political leader. At the same time, the country has limited resources and, as Mrs Persad-Bissessar rightly pointed out, migrants have been given ready access to public healthcare and education. Compassion must be balanced with pragmatism. A more workable policy, for example, would mandate that all non-citizens pay for healthcare, except for children, pregnant women, and individuals with critical injuries.

Most of the Venezuelans seem to be surviving financially. Not only have many been employed by businesses, but the proliferation of Spanish signs suggests that they have also become consumers. The bigoted comments about Venezuelans that were common just a few years ago have become muted with Trinidadians, as usual, adapting to the new arrivals.

Nonetheless, the Government must continue grappling with the fiscal and societal challenges of such a large foreign cohort. The public purse is already under strain and ways must be found to accommodate the migrants and ensure they become a net benefit to our society.

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