Colombia will provisionally regularize nearly one million Venezuelan irregular migrants, President Ivan Duque announced on Monday during a visit by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
"We are making public the decision of our country to create a provisional protection statute in Colombia which will make it possible to launch a process of regularization of these migrants"
, declared to the press the Head of State, in the presence of Filippo Grandi, the boss of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
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Colombia, which no longer has diplomatic relations with Venezuela, hosts the largest number (1.7 million) of Venezuelan migrants who have fled their country since 2015 due to the deep economic and social crisis there.
According to the UN, 34% of the 5.4 million Venezuelans who left their country since that date have found refuge in Colombia.
About 56% of them, or about 950,000 people, are illegals, according to national migration authorities.
These migrants will be able to benefit from a protection status for a period of ten years, during which they can apply for residence if they wish to stay in Colombia, according to President Duque.
The process will begin with the official registration of migrants which will include their
"place of residence, their socio-economic conditions (...) they will also be registered in a biometric register"
, he said.
In December, Ivan Duque was harshly criticized for announcing that illegal Venezuelans present in Colombia would be excluded from the vaccination campaign against Covid-19 which is due to begin on February 20 in this country of 50 million inhabitants.
He then launched an appeal for international aid to be able to vaccinate these illegal migrants.