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The Colombian authorities have the alerts on: thousands of Venezuelan migrants who hThey had returned to their country in the middle of the quarantine for the covid-19 now they begin their return to Colombia.
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According to Migración Colombia, since the closure of the border on March 14, 106,000 migrants have returned towards Venezuela. Of these, 72 percent returned from Norte de Santander, 20 percent from Arauca and 8 percent from La Guajira.
However, after the reactivation of the economy in Colombia, along the borders with Venezuela, citizens have begun to see walking in search of reaching the interior of the country. But this time more Venezuelans would enter than left.
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What is expected is that an appetite for return to Colombia begins to be given, we must not forget that Venezuela has not improved its situation
According to Juan Francisco Espinosa, director of Migration Colombia, it is calculated that for every Venezuelan citizen who left, two will enter. That is, if 106,000 citizens of the neighboring country left during the quarantine, now more than 200,000 would enter.
“This new phase in which we have entered the framework of this pandemic has an impact on migratory phenomena, the expected thing is that the process of mobilization of migrants abroad will stop and that an appetite for return to Colombia begins,” We must not forget that Venezuela has not improved its situation, ”said Espinosa.
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Deivy Rosero is one of the migrants who was unable to return to his country. For this reason, he decided to return to Popayán, the city where he lived for the last three years. For him, being on the border or returning to Venezuela is no longer a viable option. “I arrived in July thinking that here or in my country I would have opportunities, but here life is harder, I prefer to return and Take advantage of the fact that restaurants and shops have already opened. The same will my cousins and a group of friends who are still in Valencia (Venezuela) ”, said Rosero.
Until June, the month of the last registration that Migración Colombia has, there were 1,748,716 Venezuelans in the country, but only 43.6 percent of them are in regular condition, that is, with up-to-date documents.
Hundreds of migrants must reach their host destinations on foot or waiting for a ride in truck trailers and tractor-trailers.
Julián Ríos Monroy. TIME
Closed borders
According to Decree 1168 of August 25, 2020, all border crossings in Colombia will remain closed until October 1. For now, only those who are within the exceptions provided can enter and leave the country through the authorized border points.
That is, the majority of citizens of the neighboring country, as recognized by Migración Colombia, are at this time entering Colombia through irregular steps, which makes it difficult to normalize and endangers these people. In fact, according to the Venezuelan newspaper El Nacional, some 800 citizens of that country have crossed the border into Colombia in the last week.
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For all this, civil organizations that have studied the matter began to request the reopening of the border between the two countries, in order to achieve an adequate handling of the crisis.
The people who are still returning to Venezuela do not know what to expect. There the crisis is getting stronger every day
“The fear of the virus cannot keep the legal steps closed, people and goods go unprotected along the trails, opening them requires agreeing and implementing adequate biosecurity protocols and a true post-pandemic economic reactivation. We must ensure that both countries legalize the movement of people and goods with health measures that generate well-being, employment, development and sustainability ”, indicated the organization Puentes Ciudadanos Colombia-Venezuela.
Given that recipient countries now face the challenge of meeting the needs of Venezuelan migrants, and at the same time managing the health crisis due to covid-19, there is a need for timely and accurate data on the characteristics and vulnerabilities of this population that arrives in the country.
“We need good data to guide the decisions of governments, civil society organizations and the international community so that we can turn a mixed-flow crisis, especially in the midst of the covid-19 pandemic, into a long-term opportunity to the region, taking advantage of the talent and skills of Venezuelan refugees and migrants who have moved to other countries, ”said the president of the Institute for Migration Policies, Andrew Selee.
The worsening of the economic crisis, the need to send remittances from abroad to the family that remains in Venezuela and the deterioration of public services in recent months have prompted thousands of Venezuelans to return to their host countries.
And to this is added the treatment that the so-called returnees have received in their country, from the authorities of the Nicolás Maduro regime, and that the OAS documented in a report released last week. They have been branded as “bioterrorists” and “biological weapons”, in addition to being threatened with quarantine in cells, among other things.
To return to their host countries, such as Colombia, some Venezuelan citizens will use what Professor Gerardo González, project manager for Consultores 21, calls “migratory networks”. “They are normally of two types: formal ones, employers, people who find them jobs; and some more informal ones, from friends, family, neighbors, local people, who they already know, who already have something for them in the receiving place ”, explains González.
According to a recent survey by Consultants 21, 13 percent of Venezuelans are willing to leave their country, even in the context of the pandemic.
For the former Venezuelan mayor David Smolansky, in charge of the OAS office for the Venezuelan migrant and refugee crisis, there could be an abrupt increase in people leaving the country: “If it is decided to open the border and Nicolás Maduro continues to usurp power , we are going to see a stampede of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans ”.
The pilgrimage of migrants to reach the country
It is a group of four, but only the youngest, 12-year-old Itamar, wears a mask. The concern of catching Covid-19 is in the background: they left more than a month ago from the state of Guárico, in the Venezuelan plains, but they have not yet reached Bogotá, their destination.
Itamar is 12 years old. He had to leave his studies to migrate to Colombia.
Julián Ríos Monroy. TIME
“In Venezuela there is no way to live, to have stability. We held on while a solution arrived, but there was none, so we had to escape ”, says Giovanni Hernández, Itamar’s father, whose lips are split.
They are in Arcabuco, a town in Boyacá where the temperature can be below 10 degrees. At the foot of the road, where they wait for a truck or tractor to allow them to get on their trailer, they have their luggage: three suitcases, two packages and some bags that, according to Hernández, they have carried for at least 300 kilometers that they carry. walking tours.
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Although the legal border crossings are closed from March 14 to October 1, thousands of migrants are returning to Colombia by trails, taking advantage of the reopening that took place in the country after months of confinement, which forced around 106,000 Venezuelans to return to their country.
“The people who are still returning to Venezuela don’t know what to expect. There the crisis is getting stronger every day, everything has to be bought in dollars, ”warns Hernández.
According to the United Nations, more than five million citizens have left Venezuela because of the difficult economic and social situation, but it is the first time that this 40-year-old father has migrated.
He found the motivation after some compatriots assured him that in Bogotá he would be able to get a job as a car painter, a trade to which he was dedicated in Guárico.
“One is afraid of leaving his land, but what do you do if you have a family to feed?, sentence.
‘It is urgent that we banish the rejection’: Socorro Ramírez
How has the situation of Venezuelans in Colombia been in the pandemic?
According to the Inter-Agency Group on Mixed Migration Flows (Gifmm) survey, 91 percent of Venezuelans in Colombia reported that their main source of income was paid work; with the pandemic it dropped to 20 percent. A good part have not been able to obtain the Special Permit to Stay and their jobs have been informal on the street. With the quarantine, the majority were left without any economic income, 53 percent said they need help to pay rent, as they have been thrown out of daily payers and have had to seek refuge in the streets or parks.
Could there be a reactivation of the arrival of Venezuelan migrants?
Many are already beginning to try to return to Colombia. Zulia, Táchira and Apure, Venezuelan border states with Colombia, are among those with the greatest contagion of covid-19. And if there were a health crisis there, there would be a greater demand for services on this side of the border, which with the multiplication of the circulation of people without any protection through informal or illegal crossings in the border area, would increase the number of patients in the main hospitals on the Colombian side.
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What to do about this?
Coordination of national and local state efforts with companies and social or humanitarian initiatives and with international cooperation is urgent, since at any time there may be a return to Colombia of Venezuelans and Colombians with binational families and a new significant flow of migrants.
Border governments must be helped to cope with the migration funnel and its impacts, and it is essential to overcome the short-term perspective, since migration is not just an emergency situation. Many, perhaps most, are here to stay. It is urgent that Colombia banish any rejection or discrimination towards the exodus from Venezuela.
POLITICAL WRITING, ANDREÍNA ITRIAGO AND JULIÁN RÍOS
TIME
