BOGOTÁ, Colombia – President Iván Duque of Colombia announced Monday that his government will grant temporary legal status to more than 1.7 million Venezuelan migrants who have fled to Colombia in recent years, a far-reaching move that will allow migrants work legally and establish lives out of the shadows.
The decision was hailed by the head of the UN Refugee Agency, Filippo Grandi, as “historic” and “the most important humanitarian gesture” in the region in decades.
The decision will allow Venezuelan migrants who register with the Colombian government to remain in the country for 10 years.
More than half of the 1.7 million Venezuelans in the country have no legal personality. Under the new measure, those who entered Colombia without permission before January 31 are eligible for legalization. And those who already have legal status will now be free, for at least a decade, from having to apply again for permission to stay.
Venezuela, run by a socialist-inspired government for the past two decades, has been in crisis since 2014, causing a collapse that economists consider the worst in decades outside the war. With the disappearance of food, gasoline and medicines, and with the government of President Nicolás Maduro increasingly repressive, about 5.4 million people left the country, leading to one of the biggest migratory crises in the world.
About a third of Venezuelan migrants landed in neighboring Colombia.
In a speech on Monday, Duke, a conservative whose government is closely aligned with the United States, characterized his decision in humanitarian and practical terms.
He asked listeners to have compassion for migrants from around the world. “Migration crises are, by definition, humanitarian crises,” he said.
But he also emphasized that the measure would help the government do its job, helping authorities to identify people in need and helping them track who violates the law.
“We have almost a million migrants in our country whose names we don’t know,” said Duque, adding: “We don’t know where they are, how old they are, what their socioeconomic status is. And this is a bad situation. It is a bad situation because it does not allow us to have a clear social policy. It is a bad situation because it does not allow us to have a clear security policy. ”
The arrival of nearly two million Venezuelan migrants to a country of 50 million has stretched budgets and angered some Colombians, who see newcomers as a competition for jobs and other services. Duke’s announcement on Monday should exacerbate some of that anger.
In his speech, he reiterated the call for more global aid to help Colombia deal with the humanitarian crisis, which the Brookings Institution called one of the most underfunded in modern history.
On Monday, Yohany Gonzalez, 46, a Venezuelan immigrant from Caracas, called Colombia’s new policy “the best thing that could have happened to me”.
Ms. Gonzalez crossed to Colombia on foot three years ago, with two of her children and a grandson, and was unable to find work because she has no legal status, she said. She spends time on the street, trying to sell bags of trash and sweets.
“I don’t want to continue on the street, begging,” she said. “I want a real job.”
Sofía Villamil contributed reporting.