Colombia intends to regularize one million undocumented Venezuelans

A boy practices baseball in a makeshift camp for Venezuelan migrants in Bogotá.Camilo Rozo

The Government of Colombia intends to regularize about one million undocumented Venezuelan migrants who are already in its territory through a temporary protection statute valid for 10 years.

The project ratifies the policy of reception and migration flexibility that the country has maintained through thick and thin, with a roadmap to integrate Venezuelan families that have settled throughout its territory in recent years.

It also becomes a gateway to the offer of State services, on the eve of the start of the mass vaccination that from next February 20 seeks to immunize the population in the midst of the covid-19 pandemic.

"We make public the decision of our country to create a temporary protection statute in Colombia, which allows us to carry out a process of regularization of those migrants who are in our country," declared President Iván Duque, after meeting in Bogotá with the high UN Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi.

"We are not a rich country, we are a middle-income country and we have made a great fiscal effort to face this situation," the president recalled.

He noted that he hopes that other countries in the region will follow that example, and that the international community will contribute resources and tools to serve the migrant population.

"With this, Colombia reaffirms its love and support for all the Venezuelan people who have been the victim of this tragedy," he concluded with reference to the Nicolás Maduro regime.

More than five million Venezuelans have fled their country driven by hyperinflation, insecurity or food and medicine shortages in recent years, a massive flow that has intensified with the deterioration of the economic crisis and the institutional blockade in Caracas .

Of them, a third have settled in search of opportunities in neighboring Colombia, with which Venezuela shares more than 2,200 kilometers of a porous border with many informal crossings known as "trails."

At the end of 2020, there were 1,729,537 Venezuelans on the other side of the border line, of which 966,714 were in an irregular situation -that is, they have entered the trails, or have exceeded the terms of the permit granted-, in accordance with the Colombia Migration figures.

During 2019 the number in an irregular situation multiplied by two, and stabilized at that point during the first third of 2020, when the pandemic completely changed the expectations of all the inhabitants of the region.

The announced legal mechanism - complementary to the international refugee protection regime, as explained by the Colombian authorities - essentially seeks to achieve a single registry of the Venezuelan migrant population - which includes the collection of biometric data -, grant the temporary benefit of regularization and eventually facilitate their transition to the ordinary immigration regime.

The measures include all regular Venezuelan migrants, those who are in Colombia in an irregular situation by January 31, 2021, and those who enter Colombia through a migration checkpoint during the first two years of validity of the nascent Temporary Statute. of Protection for Venezuelan Migrants (ETPV).

"It is an emblematic humanitarian gesture for the region, even for the whole world," said Grandi, the head of UNHCR, noting that it represents a commitment to human rights and will allow, among others, greater vaccination coverage in the midst of the pandemic care.

"This important act of solidarity will allow approximately one third of the 5 million Venezuelan refugees and migrants in the region to formally access services and contribute to the Colombian economy," underlined a statement by the UN Secretary General, António Guterres.

The pandemic has exposed the precarious conditions of Venezuelan migrants scattered throughout Latin America.

In Colombia, by far the main host country, they are among the sectors most exposed to the coronavirus.

The vast majority, especially those without papers, are part of the vulnerable sections of society that have felt most strongly the onslaught of the economic crisis caused by the pandemic - nine out of ten feed the ranks of informality.

The confinement measures decreed to contain the contagions have made it difficult for them over the last year to earn a living in the cities where they had found refuge.

On the other hand, in their country of origin, to which thousands sought to return, the Chavista authorities have treated them as “biological weapons” and restricted their return.

However, the Colombian authorities have warned that, despite the border closure in force due to the health crisis, the migratory flow has reactivated and is on the rise again in circumstances that raise fears of outbreaks of xenophobia.

Mass migration has put considerable pressure on Colombian public services.

Duque said in December that, fearing a knock-on effect that could cause a “stampede,” undocumented migrants would not have the right to the covid-19 vaccine that will begin to be administered on February 20, a statement that it cost a wave of criticism.

Since then, the health authorities have qualified that position, and the president himself has repeatedly called for the mobilization of resources from the international community to address the continent's greatest migration crisis.

The announcement offers a much clearer health horizon to all these people, whose pandemic coverage was in question.

“In an unprecedented regulatory advance in its migration policy, Colombia assumes the commitment to establish a Temporary Protection Statute to support the thousands of Venezuelans who have arrived in their country promoting their integration.

This is a benchmark for a world that increasingly puts more obstacles to migrants ”, assesses Lucas Gómez, the presidential manager for the border and migration from Venezuela.

Among a “countless benefits” for the migrant population, health insurance stands out as part of a regularization that will allow its inclusion in vaccination plans.

Xenophobia and border closure

At the beginning of the pandemic, the already high negativity around people of Venezuelan origin suffered a severe rebound in the periodic measurement of the pollster Invamer.

At that time, prejudices were multiplied by the fear that migrants were a vector of contagion.

This hypothesis was gradually discarded by the facts, and the xenophobic root peak was reduced, returning to pre-pandemic levels.

But, in parallel, there has been a certain upward rise in the percentage of Colombian citizens who would consider it fair or appropriate for the border to remain open for transit after the pandemic.

They are still a minority of a quarter against the three-quarters who would prefer to close it, but it is possible that the announcement of the Presidency will have a positive effect on these indices, also relying on integration within Colombia's health and vaccination scheme.

Neither the institutional structure of the country nor its population is used to receiving large numbers of people, but this challenge can serve precisely as a trigger.