Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Two po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tists said pro­posed plans by leader of the Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA) Gary Grif­fith to clamp down on il­le­gal im­mi­gra­tion may have some mer­it in at­tract­ing sup­port­ers for next year’s gen­er­al elec­tion.

A video shared by the NTA on Fri­day high­light­ed sev­er­al mech­a­nisms aimed at re­duc­ing il­le­gal im­mi­gra­tion that would be in­tro­duced if it wins the next gen­er­al elec­tion. These in­clude a three-month mora­to­ri­um to reg­u­larise mi­grants and in­clude them in the na­tion­al work­force, a mea­sure aimed at en­hanc­ing the state’s abil­i­ty to com­bat hu­man traf­fick­ing and work­er ex­ploita­tion.

The NTA said the pol­i­cy would be en­forced through a strict de­por­ta­tion pol­i­cy for mi­grants un­will­ing to be reg­is­tered.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad said bring­ing im­mi­grants in­to the na­tion­al work­force would en­hance the lo­cal econ­o­my with tax­es but she warned that this could al­so lead to com­pe­ti­tion with lo­cal work­ers.

“This al­so will en­cour­age more im­mi­grants to come in if they are reg­u­larised and our scarce re­sources, wa­ter, elec­tric­i­ty, ed­u­ca­tion, and hous­ing will be stretched,” she said.

Dur­ing his cam­paign and his pre­vi­ous term in of­fice, US Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump lob­bied for stiffer im­mi­gra­tion poli­cies aimed at pre­vent­ing a wide­spread in­flux of mi­grants.

Re­fer­ring to Trump’s vic­to­ry in the re­cent US Pres­i­den­tial elec­tions, Dr Ram­per­sad said a com­par­i­son could not be made with Grif­fith’s im­mi­gra­tion pol­i­cy as T&T’s de­mo­graph­ics and at­ti­tudes are dif­fer­ent to the US.

“Gary Grif­fith be­longs to a third par­ty that has not been able to get any seats so far,” she said.

“We can­not com­pare the NTA to the Re­pub­li­can par­ty. One is a mas­sive en­ti­ty with a huge fol­low­ing and rich sup­port­ers.

“My per­spec­tive is that we’re talk­ing to coun­tries and not be­cause he’s pur­su­ing an im­mi­gra­tion pol­i­cy means he’s go­ing to have the same out­come as Don­ald Trump, they are two very dif­fer­ent par­ties.”

Fel­low po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Win­ford James agreed that while there were com­mon el­e­ments to im­mi­gra­tion trends world­wide, the bor­der be­tween the US and Mex­i­co could not be com­pared to T&T’s mi­gra­tion is­sues with Venezuela.

Dr James said while he felt the cur­rent gov­ern­ment has not tak­en the steps need­ed to bet­ter se­cure T&T’s bor­ders, the po­lit­i­cal dy­nam­ics lo­cal­ly are too dif­fer­ent to say whether Grif­fith would re­ceive sup­port sim­i­lar to that of Trump on the is­sue of im­mi­gra­tion.

“I imag­ine peo­ple will hear that he wants to have a more ro­bust at­ti­tude to il­le­gal im­mi­gra­tion and I imag­ine what he’s fo­cused on is Venezue­lans com­ing in­to our porous bor­ders.

“The cur­rent gov­ern­ment has not tak­en the kind of steps need­ed to close up our bor­ders, to seal some of our bor­ders. That sim­ply hasn’t hap­pened,” he said.

“Our bor­ders have been easy to pen­e­trate and that’s go­ing to have trac­tion with quite a num­ber of peo­ple.”

Dr James said Grif­fith should pro­vide fur­ther de­tails on the na­ture of the pol­i­cy and what mech­a­nisms would be in­tro­duced to en­sure its suc­cess for a more com­pre­hen­sive analy­sis.

Asked how high of a pri­or­i­ty im­mi­gra­tion is for vot­ers, James said giv­en the fo­cus on crime and se­cu­ri­ty, a link could be drawn to the pro­lif­er­a­tion of il­le­gal mi­grants, but he was scep­ti­cal about whether this would work.

“If that can be done I think that would be on the vot­er’s mind, but I’m not so sure the gov­ern­ment can make that ar­gu­ment strong­ly enough to per­suade peo­ple in suf­fi­cient num­bers to vote for them,” he said.