“They don’t want us here anymore”: the thousands of Venezuelans now facing without papers in Colombia

Some have “the ongoing process, but no evolution.” Others had their “system profile deleted”. Some, on the other hand, need to “delete it to start over”. There are also people who “have not extended their visa without explanation”. Others have even printed out their permit, the system says, but “no one knows where it is”.

The testimonies of Venezuelans in Colombia without regular status are piling up daily. There are thousands of migrants who have been unable to renew their residence permits in the past year and thousands more who have been unable to formalize them since entering the country.

Something is happening. Nobody really knows what it is But the days of flexible regularizations that classified Colombia as a “generous”, “open” and “world example” country towards Venezuelan migration seem to be behind us..

The first evidence can be seen every morning at the entrance to Migración Colombia on Calle 100 in Bogotá, a street stall packed with dozens of Venezuelans desperate for their immigration issue.

“They tell me I’m not in the system,” says one. “Looks like I need to redo the biometrics,” says another. Each story is unique, but they all have a bureaucratic tangle that is hard to understand. They speak of “incidence”, “resolution”, “guardianship”, “free behaviour”, “illegal migration”. They call several abbreviations: RUMV, PQRS, ETPV, PEP.

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“In Colombia, it is believed that useful foreigners are those who have a university degree or money. The rest is useless, harmful”

Hand in hand with the street carts selling coffee and empanadas in the rows, they enter the complex framework of the Colombian state. Anything to give them what they call “the plastic”, the card that gives them permission to be here.

Colombia has taken in almost half of the 7 million Venezuelans who left the country because of the crisis.

Initially, the governments of Juan Manuel Santos and Iván Duque established protocols, entities and legal means for migrants to formalize their status to work, receive education and enjoy health. Thanks to that, the country received resources and congratulations from abroad.

But since Gustavo Petro came to power just under a year ago, “the process stalled”said Gaby Arenas, a Venezuelan social leader who counsels thousands of compatriots in their process.

“They don’t want us here anymore. If there’s no way to regularize, it’s because they don’t want you. Whoever comes today has nothing to do. It will eventually become easier to become a Spanish citizen,” he laments.

However, Petro has not indicated that it wants to interrupt the regularizations. He has said that, as part of his rapprochement with President Nicolás Maduro and the restoration of bilateral relations frozen for years, wants to promote the “voluntary return” of Venezuelans.

BBC Mundo contacted the Presidency, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Migration Colombia to get a response to the complaints of dozens of collected testimonies, but at the time of publishing this report, the requests were unsuccessful.

“On the background”

Carlos Fernando García is the political scientist who appointed Petro as head of Migration Colombia, an entity under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, two months after he came to power.

In a presentation to Congress, García, who had been in exile for more than a decade, claimed that he had arrived at an unstructured and collapsed entity.

“Migration needs nearly 600 jobs, many of them in posts in the border area,” he said.

He added that in 2021, the Colombia Migration software for granting the Temporary Protection Permit (PPT) has collapsed. “The new government is setting up a new technology system,” he said.

“If we leave some undocumented people, we promote a black market for labor., in trade, at work,” he said. “Irregularity reinforces mafia phenomena of migrant smuggling that neither police nor authorities can control.”

The rapprochement with Maduro, the reopening of the border and the re-establishment of consular and commercial relations with Venezuela were among the main foreign policies of Petro, who has also tried to show himself as a mediator between the opposition and Chavism.

“But the migration agenda has faded into the background”says Ronal Rodríguez, a researcher at the Venezuelan Observatory at the Universidad del Rosario in Bogotá.

“The issue disappeared, they dismantled the border management (a committee of the presidency) and in the Foreign Office the issue has been addressed to a vice-chancellor,” he added.

Jessica Corredor, an immigration consultant, assures that “the issue was frozen for almost a year”, in the sense that “it was handed over to a Ministry of Equality to be structured just (a year after Petro took office)”.

And he adds: “The latest figures published by Migration are from February 2022. The government put some numbers together in October, but no one understands why they were taken off the page. Data is made invisible”.

The BBC asked Migration Colombia for exact numbers of regularizations in the past year, but received no response.

If it’s impossible to know how many Venezuelans there are in Colombia — estimated at between 2 and 3 million — it’s even harder to know how many Venezuelans don’t have legal immigration status: estimates range from 300,000 to 800,000.

It’s also hard to really know why Petro would want to push immigration aside. But one of the hypotheses is his search for good relations with Maduro, a key player in the peace negotiations with the guerrillas and critic of the Venezuelan diaspora.

“Disappointed in the Colombian State”

In general, Venezuelans have three ways to legalize their status in Colombia: relatives of Colombians who went to Venezuela during the war can be naturalized, those who have been here for several years and have a job can get a visa, and all others may choose to use the PPT, the map which gives the right to education, work and health for a certain period of time.

The three processes have become complicated over the past year, according to Venezuelan organizations consulted by BBC Mundo, after several years in which the process was relatively efficient.

Yessica Carolina Poveda is a 31-year-old Venezuelan who immigrated to the border town of Cúcuta two years ago with her five children and husband, who is Colombian. All children already have the nationality. The eldest, 14 years old, dreams of becoming a footballer and last month she wanted to come to Bogotá to play an official match for the first time.

“But since I couldn’t get the PPT and I’m not legalized, they wouldn’t accept my permission to let her travel, so she couldn’t go and play the game,” says Poveda, who currently lives in a rented apartment. that they asked her to leave in a week and had no money – or work – to move to another room.

“Most likely, unfortunately, we will all have to return to Venezuela.”, he assures.

Surveys estimate that between 75 and 85% of Venezuelans want to stay in Colombia.

The case of 47-year-old Maru Juárez is different from Poveda’s: she arrived in the country four years ago with a formal job at an NGO that enabled her to obtain the visa twice. He pays taxes, health, has a bank account and considers himself part of the Colombian system.

“But in 2023 everything changed,” he says. “Officials no longer treat you with the same kindnessthey fall into migratory negligence, they send you from one place to another, to ask for an appointment, to go to another, to delete the registry and in the end the truth is that, having spent 2 million pesos (about US$500), I’m still irregular.”

“One is a warrior and I am going to exhaust all resources, but I am disappointed in the Colombian state. The truth is that I will not be here illegally.”