Government reactivated the plan to repatriate Venezuelan migrants

• Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yván Gil explained that the program is carried out through the state airline Conviasa

The Venezuelan government reactivated its repatriation plan on Tuesday, July 16, now called the Great Mission Return to the Homeland, with the arrival of a flight from Mexico, on which 261 people traveled who had emigrated for different reasons, mainly political and economic, and who decided to return to the South American country.

In the midst of the electoral campaign for the presidential elections on July 28, Foreign Minister Yván Gil received the repatriated migrants at the Simón Bolívar International Airport in Maiquetía, La Guaira state, where he reiterated that the government program for the return of migrants is carried out through the state airline Conviasa.

“Conviasa has returned this group of compatriots, who had migrated as a result of the false hope that was sold to them” and who “realized that their future is here in Venezuela,” said the foreign minister, quoted in a press release.

This is the first repatriation flight completed by the government, following President Nicolás Maduro expanded the migrant return program he created in 2018, under the name Vuelta a la Patria, which has already returned thousands of people in the last six-year term.

The president called on migrants to return to Venezuela, as he said that the “worst is behind us,” alluding to the crisis that gripped the country’s economy for almost eight years, and predicted that the oil-producing nation “will be the wonder of South America” due to its recovery, which has remained stable over the last three years.

Nearly 7.7 million Venezuelans have left the country in the last decade, according to data reported by United Nations agencies, a number that Maduro’s government denies, reducing the figure to regarding two million, of which – it claims – one million have already returned to their place of origin.

Photo: Conviasa

The OFAC license that allows the repatriation of Venezuelan migrants

On February 29, the United States Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued a license that allows Conviasa to carry out repatriation flights of Venezuelan citizens from other countries in the Western Hemisphere.

General License 45B, which replaced the General License number 45Aauthorizes not only repatriation flights, but also the transactions necessary for the maintenance of the aircraft used in these trips.

However, this measure does not lift all the restrictions imposed on the Venezuelan state airline and the Maduro government. At the time, OFAC warned that the authorization does not apply to transactions involving sanctioned persons or entities.

With information from EFE

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