The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
MASS MIGRATION Despite help in South America, Venezuelans are heading north Many say Colombia program not able to help sustain a family.
Food shortages triggered by Venezuela’s economic collapse pushed Victor Rojas onto a bus and across the border to Colombia. But soon after arriving, he was in a state of shock.
He had quickly gone from studying music at a univer- sity in Caracas, Venezuela, and performing in orchestras to playing violin for tips on the streets of Bogotá.
But within mon t hs of arriving, he had received a special residency permit meant to address a surge of Venezuelan migrants. Eventually, his street performances led to regular gigs at weddings and graduations, and the permit allowed him to formalize his growing business and gain an economic toehold.
The permit program, created by Colombia in 2021 and supported by the United States, was hailed as inno- vative and generous, particularly for a country with little experience with 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 one way to address the migration crisis at the U.S. border.
During a visit to Colombia two years ago, U.S. Secre- tary of State Antony Blinken called the program “a model for the region, and in many ways a model for the world.”
The program, which was announced by Colombia’s then-president, Iván Duque, a conservative ally of the United States, grants temporary protected status to nearly all Venezuelans in Colombia, allowing them to live and work legally for 10 years, including many with no photo identification.
Rojas, 26, said his resi- dency status “changed abso- lutely everything.”
“I had access to health care, I had access to banks,” he added.
By one measure, the program has been a major success — more than 2 million Venezuelans have registered for Colombian residency.
But by other measures, the policy is falling short, and many Venezuelans have left Colombia bound for the U.S., contributing to a record number of Venezuelans who arrived at the U.S. border last year.
While there is no data available on how many Venezuelans with a Colom- bian permit have migrated, many Venezuelans making their way north say they decided to abandon Colom- bia because they could not earn enough to support their families.
Though Rojas has found financial stability in Colom- bia, he said he has 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 settled mainly in Colombia, Peru and Ecuador.
But when word spread that Washington’s lack of diplomatic relations with Venezuela made it difficult to turn away migrants, many decided to risk a dangerous trek through the Darién Gap, a jungle linking South and Central America, creating a humanitarian and political crisis for President Joe Biden.
Venezuelan migration to the U.S. border exploded in recent years, to more than 189,000 crossings last year, from roughly 4,500 in 2020. This has made Vene- zuelans the second-largest migrant group, after Mexicans, entering the United States illegally.
For the United States, Colombia’s temporary visa program came to be seen as one way to address the surge, said Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute in Wash- ington.
“Over time, it acquired greater visibility as a means of managing migration in the hemisphere,” he said.
But in October, the Biden administration abruptly shifted gears and started expelling most Venezuelans, using a pandemic-era public health rule. At the same time, the administration 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 started stopping Venezuelans trying to enter the country, the number of Venezuelans encountered at the border dropped to less than 100 a day in January from roughly 1,100 a day the week before the Biden administration’s announcement in October, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
More than 7 million Venezuelans, one-fourth of the country’s population, have left since 2015 — the sec- ond-largest migration in the world after Ukraine — and about one-third have ended up in Colombia. The two nations share deep linguistic, cultural and familial ties, and the approach toward the growing migrant population was quickly one of inclusion.
For Colombia, a middle-income country of 50 million, to accept 2.5 million refugees was no small feat, and the campaign to give permits to people whom Duque often referred to as their “Venezuelan brothers and sisters” was lauded internationally.
“This policy is really a model. Which country has done that?” said Mireille Girard, the representative in Colombia for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. “Giving 10 years of temporary protec- tion to a large number of persons that were in need 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 a simi- lar status.
Christian Krüger, a former director of Colombia’s immigration authority, noted that in 2014 the total number of foreigners from any coun- try living in Colombia was less than 140,000.
W hen Venezue l a ns started arriving in large numbers, officials adopted an open-door policy by distributing various types of visas, before establishing the broader temporary permit program.
Rojas, for example, first received a residency per- mit in 2018, before he got temporary protected status in 2021.
It has not been without hiccups. Reaching applicants in rural areas without internet access or documentation was difficult, said Ronal Rodríguez, a researcher at Rosario University in Bogotá who has studied the permit progra m. Many employers, bank workers and health care providers do not recognize the permit, he added.
There have also been long delays. While 2.5 million Venezuelan migrants have registered for the permit, less than 1.6 million have actually received one.
Experts cite these shortcomings as contributing to Venezuelans choosing to leave Colombia.
But many Venezuelans suggest a bigger reason: that even a seemingly generous migration policy cannot solve the low wages, lack of upward mobility and high inflation plaguing Colombia and much of Latin America.
“They are not leaving because of imm i gration policy,” said Ligia Bolívar, a sociologist from Venezuela based in Bogotá. “They still believe in the American dream.”
On a corner outside a hamburger restaurant in Cedritos, a neighborhood in north Bogotá nicknamed “Cedrizuela” because of its large concentration of Venezuelans, a group of delivery workers, all of whom were from the Venezuelan city of Maracaibo, were gathered.
They all had similar stories. They said they had gotten temporary permits, but had dreams of living else- where. They had worked in car washes, fast food restaurants and bars. None paid more than enough to scrape by.
In recent years, Vene- zuelans have become the engine of what many work- ers call an underpaid, overworked delivery economy in Colombian cities, where they deliver food and other goods by motorcycle or bicycle to wealthier people.
José Tapia, a 24-year delivery worker, used his phone to scroll through the payments — all less than $1. On an average day, he said, he made about $10, roughly the equivalent of Colom- bia’s daily minimum wage.
Another delivery worker, Santiago Romero, 39, has lived in six countries in Latin America over the past four years. But his ultimate goal is the United States; he has started the application process under the new parole program and hopes to join his brother in Las Vegas.
“He tells me, ‘Things are better here,’” said Romero. “That you have to work hard, but it’s better.”