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T&T ....Venezuelans preyed upon despite registration

 
sgtdjones 2019-07-14 13:01:56 

Venezuelans preyed upon despite registration

An SOS for help has gone out to law en­force­ment from a group of Venezue­lans who came be­fore the re­cent reg­is­tra­tion ex­er­cise but did not get the op­por­tu­ni­ty to reg­is­ter and who are now al­leged­ly be­ing “kept” by peo­ple they are work­ing for.

That prob­lem, plus job scams, sex­u­al ad­vances on job in­ter­views and oth­er is­sues are among some of the ex­pe­ri­ences Venezue­lan mi­grants have en­coun­tered since Gov­ern­ment’s reg­is­tra­tion ex­er­cise end­ed on June 14—a month to­day.

Mem­bers of sev­er­al Venezue­lan com­mu­ni­ty net­works re­lat­ed ex­pe­ri­ences to the Sun­day Guardian as Venezue­lans con­tin­ue set­tling in and await­ing their reg­is­tra­tion cards.

Last Thurs­day, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said cards be­ing print­ed should be dis­trib­uted in a few weeks. He said reg­is­tra­tion forms had pro­vid­ed a wealth of in­for­ma­tion and au­thor­i­ties were now track­ing prob­lems, in­clud­ing traf­fick­ing. But for those in T&T who did not reg­is­ter, au­thor­i­ties would not have in­for­ma­tion on cer­tain prob­lems af­fect­ing them.

In­ter­preter Aracelie D’Oliv­era, part of var­i­ous groups as­sist­ing mi­grants, has, how­ev­er, been get­ting in­for­ma­tion be­yond what is on forms. She said she re­ceived a mes­sage ear­ly last week from a Venezue­lan man who sought help. He said he came to T&T pri­or to the reg­is­tra­tion but did not get to reg­is­ter and he and 25 oth­ers were now work­ing for em­ploy­ers in the East-West cor­ri­dor (lo­ca­tions giv­en) and were now al­leged­ly be­ing “held hostage” to en­sure they worked off pay­ment for the trip.

The man told D’Oliv­era he came here il­le­gal­ly with about 25 oth­ers.


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