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Originally published in Caracas Chronicles
Excerpt:
The tension between the need to ensure a country’s national security and
guarantee migrants and refugees human rights exists. Each country has the right
to find the best way to reach the appropriate balance for its own context, and
this right must be respected. However, the severity of the humanitarian crisis
in Venezuela, affecting people’s most basic needs: food security and health,
make it imperative for countries to offer solutions and options to collectively
preserve their rights.
Betilde Muñoz-Pogossian
The
volume. The speed. The diversification of destination countries. Three
characteristics of the massive exodus of Venezuelans to other countries of the
region. Three characteristics which also make it one of the largest
displacement movements ever seen in the region according to the UN Refugee
Agency. Migración Argentina reported that during the
first two months of 2018, an average of 363
Venezuelans entered the country per day. Some
estimates put the number of Venezuelans who will arrive in Peru by the end of
2018 at 1 million. Regularization is the door to the protection of these
migrants and refugees’ rights but if a passport is required, let’s expect
irregular migration to become the status quo because, passport or no
passport, Venezuelan migration is here to stay, much more as a result of the economic
measures recently adopted by the Maduro government.
Within
their right to national sovereignty, each country
of destination for Venezuelans has its own ways of processing their legal
status based on the options available in the national migration regime
(temporary or permanent residence, temporary protection, asylum seeker status,
refugee status, etc.). While Colombia set a commendable example at the
beginning of August with the approval of Decree 1288,
which helped regularize around 400 thousand Venezuelans who were irregular
migrants, Ecuador and Peru decided to change the conditions of entry. In the
past Venezuelans only needed their Cédula de Identidad to enter Ecuador
and Peru but starting August 2018 (just as the economic measures were
announced), these countries decided to request a passport.
What
are the migratory options for Venezuelans in Ecuador?
Back
in 2008, the Ecuadorian government eliminated visa requirements to enter the
country for transit and tourism purposes. Venezuelan nationals who enter for
transit and tourism purposes do not need visas during the first 180 days.
During this period, they can apply for any of the visas under the 2017 Organic
Law of Human Mobility. Mind you, Ecuador has its own
diaspora, and advocating for their nationals’ rights overseas, the country has
been a leader in the regional and global debate on the right to human mobility
and in ensuring no human being is ever considered “illegal”. Its 2017 law also grants
foreigners (and returned Ecuadorians) the same rights as Ecuadorian citizens.
In
addition, there are two specific categories of visas that can be requested by
Venezuelan nationals. Since 2011 they can apply for the 2011 Ecuadorian-Venezuelan
Migration Statute that grants temporary residence if economic solvency is
demonstrated, and since 2017, Venezuelans can access the UNASUR visa (the same
UNASUR President Lenin Moreno is threatening to leave) through which the
nationals of the block can have access to temporary or permanent residence.
These options did not require the need for a valid passport, only an identity
document: the Venezuelan Identity Card, or Cédula de Identidad.
On
Thursday, August 16, Ecuador announced that it would require passports starting
on Saturday August 18, alleging security problems in Venezuelan birth
certificates and cédulas. The goal was also to be able to better prevent
cases of human trafficking and smuggling of migrants by ensuring regular migration
with regular documents.
The
tension between the need to ensure a country’s national security and guarantee
migrants and refugees human rights exists. Each country has the right to find
the best way to reach the appropriate balance for its own context, and this right
must be respected. However, the severity of the humanitarian crisis in
Venezuela, affecting people’s most basic needs: food security and health, make
it imperative for countries to offer solutions and options to collectively
preserve their rights.
No
doubt. Although it serves the purposes of ensuring verification of identity of
who comes in your country and avoiding the series of crimes associated with
human mobility, requiring a passport for Venezuelans has all sorts of unwanted
consequences. Especially because a passport for a Venezuelan is like
finding a needle in a haystack.
Since
most Venezuelans do not have easy access to a passport (in other countries, it
can be a two-day procedure with minimal cost to the citizen), and the need to
seek refuge in neighboring countries has not gone, and will not go away,
Venezuelans will anyway find a way to cross Ecuador through illegal passess.
They will do the same to cross to Peru, which is also requiring a passport for
entry starting August 25th, 2018. Since Venezuelans will continue to come, they
will just get stuck at the border and will suffer not only the cold
temperatures found in places like Rumichaca, Ipiales, etc, but also the crimes
and abuses by all those who seek to benefit from their vulnerability,
especially the coyotes who are already establishing their business by
smuggling Venezuelan displaced people.
Venezuelans should thank the Defensoría del Pueblo del Ecuador.
As
soon as the passport requirement measure was announced, the Defensor del Pueblo
questioned it and asserted that "the
cruelty of these decisions ends up generating discrimination and xenophobia"
while also deepening the humanitarian tragedy Venezuelans live.
The Defensoría presented a request for precautionary measures on behalf
of Venezuelan displaced people alleging the imminent risk of violation of the
right to legal security, equality and non-discrimination.
On
Friday August 24th, 2018, to the delight of most of us, the measure was suspended for
at least 45 days. The judge in charge of the case gave Foreign
Relations that time to prepare an alternative plan to admit displaced
Venezuelans, if they want to maintain the measure.
The
next bottleneck is Peru. Ecuador has called for a technical
meeting of migration authorities on September 3rd
to compare notes on available solutions. It also
called a meeting for September 17-18, 2018 with 10 other countries (13 total,
including Venezuela) to discuss what each is doing to address flows of
Venezuelan migrant and refugees and to ensure an orderly migration.
The Organization of American States also stands ready, and is well positioned,
to support these regional efforts for coordination, after all, it is the main
political, juridical, and social governmental forum in the Hemisphere.
The fact is that no country can address the Venezuelan migration and refugee
crisis alone. At this point, the challenge has become a collective one, and
thus merits collective action. Venezuelan caminantes,
and those at the border, cannot wait. Finding solutions is urgent.
* The views are personal and do
not represent the position of the OAS.
* The views are
personal and do not represent the position of the OAS.
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