Colombian government proposes circular work visas for Venezuelan migrants

Murillo hopes that the measure will benefit Venezuelan migrants / Photo: Revista Alternativa

Colombian Foreign Minister Luis Gilberto Murillo briefly presented a new project that aims to improve the quality of working life of Venezuelan migrants in the country through a “circular visa” mechanism.

“Many people, especially from Venezuela, but also from Ecuador, have a circular behavior when they come to work in Colombia,” said the foreign minister, who explained that these migrants “come to the country, work in some activities such as, for example, harvesting crops, and return once more to Venezuela.”

The initiative, which Migración Colombia and the Ministry of Labor are already working on, aims to provide new job opportunities to migrants “because they are people who do not want to be here all the time,” Murillo added in statements to the press during the Fifth Regional Conference on Population and Development in Latin America and the Caribbean of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

Host country

Colombia is the country that welcomes the most Venezuelan migrants in the world, with an estimated 2 million 845 thousand 706 Venezuelan citizens living in the coffee-growing country.

The foreign minister was in charge of opening the meeting, which this year has, among its central themes, the treatment of the rights of socially excluded people.

He showed that in the last decade Colombia has received 2.8 million Venezuelan migrants.

“We have around 600,000 migrant children in the education system and around 1.2 million in the health system,” he said.

Policy

Although this issue is a state policy, it is Colombian society that must offer a commitment “to guarantee the dignity of the people who have arrived here,” he added.

The minister took the opportunity to remind that in Colombia there are ten ‘Intégrate Centers’ implemented in alliance with the United Nations and the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), which are a hub for migrants to receive advice on entering the labor market and receiving social benefits.

Bogota / EFE