Venezuelan migrants: aid from South America is not enough, many continue on their way to the US.

BOGOTÁ, Colombia - Food shortages caused by Venezuela's economic collapse prompted Víctor Rojas to hop on a bus and cross the border into Colombia.

But shortly after arriving, he found himself in shock.

He had gone quickly from studying music at a university in Caracas, Venezuela and performing in orchestras, to playing the violin for tips on the streets of Bogotá.

But within a few months of arriving, he obtained a special residence permit to deal with the wave of Venezuelan immigrants.

Over time, his street performances became regular performances at weddings and graduations, and his permission allowed her to formalize his growing business and establish himself financially.

Víctor Rojas, Venezuelan violinist, at his home in Bogotá, Colombia.

(Nathalia Angarita/The New York Times)

The permit program, created by Colombia in 2021 and supported by the United States, was hailed as innovative and generous

, especially for a country with little experience in mass migration flows, and was seen as a potential model for large-scale displacement in other regions. .

In the United States, which contributed more than $12 million to the program, the effort came to be seen by policymakers as a way to address the immigration crisis at the US border.

During a visit to Colombia two years ago, Secretary of State

."

The program, which was announced by then-Colombian President Iván Duque, a conservative US ally, grants temporary protected status to nearly all Venezuelans in Colombia, including many who are not photo-identified, allowing them to live and work legally for 10 years.

Rojas, 26, said his resident status "absolutely changed everything."

"I had access to health care, I had access to banks

," he added.

The program has been a complete success: more than two million Venezuelans have registered to obtain residency in Colombia.

But in other ways, the policy is falling short

,

, contributing to the record number of Venezuelans who arrived at the US border last year.

Although there is no data available on how many Venezuelans with Colombian permits have emigrated, many Venezuelans heading north say they decided to leave Colombia because they could not earn enough to support their families.

Although Rojas has found economic stability in Colombia, he said he had no plans to make the country his permanent home.

Growing up studying classical music, he said, he always dreamed of going to Paris and New York, cities "where everything that moves my soul comes from."

Since 2016, Venezuelans fleeing economic ruin under the socialist dictatorship of President Nicolás Maduro have mainly settled in Colombia, Peru and Ecuador.

But when word got out that Washington's lack of diplomatic relations with Venezuela made it difficult to turn away the migrants,

, a jungle that links South and Central America, creating a humanitarian crisis. and politics for President Joe Biden.

Venezuelan migration to the US border has skyrocketed in recent years, to more than 189,000 crossings last year, up from approximately 4,500 in 2020. This has made Venezuelans the second largest group of migrants,

FILE - A Venezuelan family walks through the Darien Pass, a dangerous jungle that leads to Colombia and Panama.

(Federico Rios Escobar/The New York Times)

For the United States, Colombia's temporary visa program came to be seen as a way to cope with the surge, said Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute in Washington.

"Over time, it gained more visibility as a means of managing migration in the hemisphere," he said.

But in October,

, applying a pandemic-era public health rule.

At the same time, the government created a new pathway that allows Venezuelans outside the United States to apply for humanitarian parole, though critics say the process is cumbersome.

Since the United States began detaining Venezuelans trying to enter the country, the number of Venezuelans found at the border dropped to less than 100 a day in January, from about 1,100 a day the week before the announcement of the Biden administration in October, according to data from the US Customs and Border Protection.

More than 7 million Venezuelans, a quarter of the country's population, have left the country since 2015

- the second largest migration in the world after Ukraine - and around a third have ended up in Colombia.

The two nations share deep linguistic, cultural, and family ties, and the approach to the growing migrant population was rapidly inclusive.

For Colombia, a country of 50 million people with a middle income level,

, and the campaign to give permits to people Duque often referred to as his "brothers and Venezuelan sisters" was praised internationally.

"This policy is really a model. What country has done it?" said Mireille Girard, representative in Colombia of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

"Giving 10 years of temporary protection to a large number of people who needed it and with a country that had its own problems."

Neighboring countries have also established temporary visa programs for Colombian migrants

: In Peru, 360,000 of the 1.5 million Venezuelans in the country have legal status, while in Ecuador 200,000 of the 500,000 Venezuelan migrants have similar status.

Christian Krüger, former director of Colombia's immigration authority, noted that in 2014 the total number of foreigners from any country living in Colombia was less than 140,000. 

As Venezuelans began to arrive in large numbers, the

distributing various types of visas, before establishing the broader program of temporary permits.

Rojas, for example, first received a residence permit in 2018, before obtaining temporary protection status in 2021.

It has not been without its setbacks.

, said Ronal Rodríguez, a researcher at the Universidad del Rosario in Bogotá who has studied the permit program.

Many employers, bank workers and health care providers do not recognize the permit, he added.

FILE - An informal settlement of Venezuelan migrants in Uribia, Guajira peninsula, Colombia.

(Adriana Loureiro Fernandez/The New York Times)

There have also been long delays.

Although 2.5 million Venezuelan emigrants have registered for the permit,

.

Experts point out that these deficiencies contribute to Venezuelans choosing to leave Colombia.

But many Venezuelans suggest a bigger reason: that

lack of upward mobility and high inflation that plague Colombia and much of Latin America.

"They don't leave because of the immigration policy," says Ligia Bolívar, a Venezuelan sociologist based in Bogotá.

"They still believe in the American dream."

On a corner in front of a hamburger restaurant in Cedritos, a neighborhood in northern Bogotá nicknamed "Cedrizuela" for its large concentration of Venezuelans, a group of delivery men gathered, all of them from the Venezuelan city of Maracaibo.

They all had similar stories.

They said they had obtained temporary permits, but dreamed of living elsewhere.

They had worked in car washes, fast food restaurants, and bars.

None paid more than enough to survive.

In recent years,

and overworked delivery economy in Colombian cities, where they deliver food and other goods by motorbike or bicycle to the wealthiest.

José Tapia, a 24-year-old delivery man, used his phone to view the payments, all of which were less than $1.

On a normal day, he said, he earned about $10, roughly the equivalent of the daily minimum wage in Colombia.

Another delivery man, Santiago Romero, 39, has lived in six Latin American countries in the last four years.

But

;

he has started the application process under the new parole program and hopes to meet his brother in Las Vegas.

"He tells me that things are better here," Romero explains.

"That you have to work hard, but that it is better."

The permit program was "valuable, but by itself it does not respond to the needs of migrants," said Laura Gil, Colombia's deputy minister for multilateral affairs.

Without more investment from the United States to improve living conditions in Colombia, she added, Venezuelans will continue to leave.

Rojas, the violinist, embodies the benefits of politics, but also its limits

.

In his own words, he was lucky that the process of obtaining his temporary permit was relatively easy, and he is "extremely grateful" to the Colombian government.

Even so, their ultimate goal has always been the United States or Europe.

Last year he made plans to cross the Darien Pass, but was thwarted after the sudden change in border policy closed the door to most Venezuelans.

Now he does not know how, when or where he will emigrate, but he is not intimidated.

Like many Venezuelan emigrants, he says uprooting his life once makes it easier to do it again.

"Emigrating made me feel free, because

," said Rojas.

"That doesn't scare me anymore, because I realized that you can be reborn."

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