BOGOTÁ, Colombia – President Iván Duque of Colombia announced on Monday that his government will grant temporary legal status to the more than 1.7 million Venezuelan migrants who have fled to Colombia in recent years, enabling migrants to work legally and establish lives out of the shadows.
The decision has been hailed by the head of the UN refugee agency, Filippo Grandi, as ‘historic’ and ‘the most important humanitarian gesture’ in the region for decades.
The decision will allow Venezuelan migrants registering with the Colombian government to stay in the country for ten years.
More than half of the 1.7 million Venezuelans in the country currently have no legal status. Under the new measure, those who entered Colombia before January 31 without permission are eligible for legalization. And those who already have legal status will now be free for at least a decade to reapply for permission to stay.
Venezuela, led by a socialist-inspired government for the past two decades, has been in crisis since 2014, leading to a collapse that economists have called the worst in decades outside the war. As food, petrol and medicine disappeared, and as the government of President Nicolás Maduro became increasingly oppressive, some 5.4 million people left the country, leading to one of the largest migration crises in the world.
About a third of Venezuelan migrants have landed in neighboring Colombia.
In a speech Monday, Mr. Duque, a Conservative whose government is closely associated with the United States, characterized his decision in both humanitarian and practical terms.
He urged listeners to sympathize with migrants around the world. “Migration crises are by definition humanitarian crises,” he said.
But he also stressed that the move would help the government do its job, by helping officials identify people in need and by detecting anyone who violates the law.
“We have almost a million migrants in our country whose names we do not know,” Duque said. and added: “We do not know where they are, how old they are, what their socio-economic condition is. And this is a bad situation. This is a bad situation because it does not allow us to have a clear social policy. This is a bad situation because it does not allow us to have a clear security policy. ”
The arrival of the nearly two million Venezuelan migrants in a country of 50 million has stretched the budget and angered some Colombians, who see the newcomers as a competition for jobs and other services. The announcement of mr. Duque Monday is likely to be exacerbated by this anger.
In his speech, he reiterated his call for more global aid to help Colombia cope with the humanitarian crisis, calling the Brookings Institution one of the most underfunded in modern history.
Yohany Gonzalez, 46, a Venezuelan immigrant originally from Caracas, called Monday’s new Colombia policy “the best thing that could have happened to me.”
Me. Gonzalez crossed to Colombia on foot three years ago, with two of her children and a grandchild, and could not get a job because she has no legal status, she said. She spends her time on the street selling garbage bags and sweets.
“I do not want to continue begging in the street,” she said. “I want a job.”
Sofía Villamil reported.