The Government of Ecuador has decided to grant an immigration amnesty and establish a new regularization process for Venezuelans and their families who are in the country and who have an expired certificate of immigration status or who have not yet obtained a special visa.
The Executive, through an executive decree signed by President Daniel Noboa, decided to “grant immigration amnesty and establish an extraordinary regularization process for Venezuelan nationals in a situation of human mobility and their family group.”
Beneficiaries must have completed the Migratory Stay Registration process activated in June 2022, have the certificate even if it has expired, and not have obtained the Temporary Residence Visa of Exception (Virte II), issued in a previous legalization process for Venezuelan migrants.
The Ecuadorian Ministry of the Interior must renew the certificates and residence permits in order to ensure that the beneficiaries can access the renewed Virte II visa.
Process
The regularization process will last eight months, the application form for registration will be free, but Venezuelan migrants will have to cover the cost of the visa and the identity card issued by the respective entity, the executive decree states.
The Virte II will be valid for two years and may be extended only once and for the same period, without prejudice to the fact that the applicant may change his or her immigration status during that period.
The decree also orders the Ministry of Economic and Social Inclusion (MIES) to support the regularization process and strengthen the immigration amnesty for Venezuelan children and adolescents who are “alone, unaccompanied or separated.”
In the process, the Ecuadorian institutions involved must accept identity documents or passports from applicants that have expired up to 5 years ago.
In addition, during the process, the Ministry of the Interior and the Police Intelligence Directorate will evaluate the profile of “risk or threat to public safety” of the applicants.
The State ministries and other entities involved in this process will have between one and two months to issue secondary regulations for the full implementation of the amnesty and the regularization process, the decree added.
Migrant groups in Ecuador
On June 28, the Venezuela Association in Ecuador, one of the most important migrant groups in the country, asked President Noboa to carry out a new regularization process for Venezuelans who have not been able to access this plan in the last two years.
The Association then warned of the risk that many Venezuelans who have accessed regularization could lose that right, because in September the validity of the Virte would begin to expire, which allowed thousands of foreigners to regularize their status between 2022 and 2023.
Previous regularization processes have been supported by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
According to the Association, these programs had enabled 248,400 people to access the Migration Registry of Stay, while 201,700 of them received a temporary residence certificate.
He also indicated that 95,700 foreigners obtained the Virte and of them 72,300 managed to obtain the Ecuadorian identity card.
Intention of foreigners
“We Venezuelans have the intention of being included in the development of this country and it is precisely the irregular migration that has prevented us from having access to fundamental rights such as identity, health, education, work, social security, free contracting, inclusion in the financial system,” among others, the Association listed.
Ecuador is currently the fifth country with the largest Venezuelan community in its territory, with 444,800 people registered, after Colombia, Peru, Brazil and Chile, according to a recent report published by the Interagency Coordination Platform for Refugees and Migrants from Venezuela (R4V).
Quito / EFE
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2024-08-25 13:50:49
