Colombia regularized more than 700,000 Venezuelans with the Temporary Protection Statute

Colombian authorities have already issued more than 700,000 cards with the Temporary Protection Statute for Venezuelans, a measure aimed at regularizing migrants and which, as Vice-President and Foreign Minister Marta Lucía Ramírez said Thursday, are seeking to apply other countries.

“The Colombian Protection Statute is a reference that they are looking at because today the reality of migration forces all nations of the world to receive migrants,” Ramírez said in a meeting with international correspondents, when asked about how the Russian invasion of Ukraine affects the resources that the country can receive. to serve Venezuelans.

In recent years, Colombia has received nearly two million Venezuelan migrants who left their country because of the political, economic and social crisis.

The Chancellor added that all countries will have to “receive migrants, adopt them, and make them live in dignified conditions, that they really have the opportunities and not be in tents indefinitely for who knows how many years”.

“We have to see how children are given schooling, the possibility of access to work,” he said.

The Temporary Protection Statute card, which began to be issued on October 13, will make it easier for Venezuelans to access employment contracts, health entities or banking services.

The previous system, called Special Permit to Permit (PEP), was a physical document that many banks and companies did not accept because of its ease of forgery.

The statute is open to all Venezuelan migrants who have entered the country before January 2021 and seeks to “discourage irregularity” and that benefit can also be accessed by those who enter the country in the first two years of the rule's validity on a regular basis, that is, with a stamp in their passport.

“What Colombia has done in the area of migration, many countries have recently asked us to share with them the experience of how the statute was designed (...) Today the issue of migration is going to become one of the most important issues in the entire world,” said Ramírez.

The vice-president also criticized the little economic support that Colombia has received from the international community and said that with the new migrations that exist in Europe due to the war in Ukraine “it will remain relative, small”.

“In any case, we will insist until the last day of the Government on leaving the donors' table organized for the next period, because we need solidarity,” he concluded.

(With information from EFE)

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