Guyana’s Bureau of Statistics reported a population of 812,000K including thousands of Venezuelan migrants.
Brazilian Diaspora reports 15,000 Brazilians in Guyana.
Prominent Cuban businessman reports about 6000 Cubans in Guyana.
And we only happened upon these statistics after a businessman, in the heart of the nation’s interior, noted that his job advertisements, alarmingly, are being responded to, almost only, by non Guyanese and more largely by Venezuelans.
It is an unsettling observation – enough to have redirected our attention from our commitment to advocating for PNC’s rescue from its current state of poor leadership and the restoration of its pillars that, all but, guaranteed quality in governing personnel.
It’s one thing to hear that the ‘Vennoes’ are the ones showing up for the job but the question is, who is responsible for their presence in those parts, these people who are looking to poach our land?
And it’s not that the Brazilians and Cubans are any less of a social threat to national and socio economic security.
The question is why are they a growing population in a Country that has a significant poverty rate – with an accuracy impeded by the absence of current data which, potentially, makes the probability of reported poverty and every other asserted measures of thriving even higher.
The presumption of this starts with a National Census which is the tool used to determine how a nation services its population optimally, by ensuring the benefit of natural resources and economic engineering to scale a fair share of Gross Domestic Product – GDP to benefit its citizens.
More shameful than unsurprising, Guyana’s Public Census data remains institutionally lazy, woefully stale-dated at 2012….with a convolution of reasons that has kerfuffled, even AI (artificial intelligence).
We know that the Census guides the provision of vital services. Hospitals, schools, public transportation, social service modules, benefits and intervention for at-risk children, are some of benefits of a timely and as far as possible, accurate collection of census data.
There are many nefarious purposes for under reporting a nation’s data.
Declining population in racial segments is one because there is perceived strength in touting a race- majority,
say in East Indians, which tends to project some political strength, especially where/when politics is race driven.
Falsifying success is another prominent reason, so when we see the school houses going up with questionable national education curricula and educator contingent quality …the success quotient is small if not non existent.
School buildings do not produce scholars. Capable teachers, grooming student quality, do.
And this bleeds over to employment that is never reported by race, in which women are generally underrepresented and in which the small- man economy has no category and no incentive- seemingly– to pay into insurances for latter days which are always coming.
But getting back to the nation’s interior and the population generally available for work – the foreign undocumented migrant.
Maybe, it’s a blessing that the Ministry of Home Affairs has ‘Fast Tracked an Electronic ID system’ at the legal entry points and a grace period for illegal entrants to voluntarily turn themselves in for registration.
But it’s hardly a relief, given the unknown numbers and no stated plan of enforcement by a dedicated paramilitary force, to methodically comb areas to find migrants who may also be from Bangladesh, Pakistan and India…given headlines like this which suggests a motive that is unsubtly ulterior.
And for all of these reasons, there is need for a mission-driven Opposition in Parliament that establishes a nation-specific agenda and organizes around its execution through a clear set of goals and objectives.
Again, this is why we are dedicated to the restoration of the Peoples National Congress which has an inherent blue print for this measure of success, when not hijacked, co-opted or corrupted for personal aggrandizement.
Border protection, along with points of entry, comprise the sovereignty and territorial integrity the Constitution guarantees every citizen in its framework.
Guyana has already earned the reputation of ‘highway’ for illegal trafficking of everything, including humans, as revealed in the Wikileaks series well before the 2015 Government. The country was, also, recipient of money from the US government to combat its transit use of pass-through illicit trade to America. It was also recipient of, at least, half million USD as part of the Caribbean Basin Initiative to stem the use of Guyana as a transit point.
If those cash receipts were ever recorded as line items on the nation’s balance sheets, we don’t know because they’re not easy to find and there’s no known narration of how the funds were ever spent, it appears.
We do know that trafficking, in all of its forms, continues and under the same Government that oversaw the genesis and thriving of these ills, for the better part of the three decades that they have been in charge of Guyana and its borders.
What seemed incongruous was the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society – operating since 2020, which was, seemingly, given free reign to support Venezuelan and possibly, other migrants, in Guyana’s interior areas.
Giving aid to Warao Indigenous communities is singly concerning in a country that celebrates its Six People’s in its National Anthem. So a separate foreign entity visiting a subset of the nation, in its interior, is gravely curious.
If the Government had agreed to have this agency in the nation’s interior servicing illegal migrants we apologize if we missed the information. But, we wonder if the last Opposition Leader didn’t think that this is information the country should have been aware of.
It is, clearly, neither classified nor sensitive and the larger mode of learning about political decisions by many Guyanese-we’re sure he knows– is through public dissemination by speech via outlets like social media.
And this brings us full circle to where we started, learning of the thousands of illegal migrants that are in the country, when the economy, touted globally as outperforming, continues to fail 58% of its citizens who live in poverty.
And as sordid as this all is, there is that silver lining of a Small Businessman paying attention to employment trends in his locale that yielded more migrant applicants for jobs than citizens, who are victims of the 58% poverty that engulfs the nation.
The power is still the Peoples’…when government secrecy meets public accountability.