Consider This from NPR - Colombia Welcomes Venezuelan Refugees With Open Arms: Will The U.S. Do The Same?

Episode Date: March 5, 2021

Colombian President Iván Duque won praise from the United Nations, Pope Francis and the Biden administration with his recent announcement that Colombia would welcome Venezuelan refugees with open arms — providing protected status, work permits and legal residency for up to 10 years. President Duque tells NPR why he's hopeful the move will spur the U.S. toward more aggressive support of Venezuelan migrants, some of whom are currently protected by a deferred deportation order signed by President Trump on his final day in office. Reporter John Otis explains what Colombia's new policy means to Venezuelans already living there. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR and the following message come from Carnegie Corporation of New York, working to reduce political polarization through philanthropic support for education, democracy, and peace. More information at carnegie.org. On the last day of his presidency, Donald Trump signed an executive action on migrants from Venezuela. These were people who came to the U.S. fleeing the worst economic crisis in that country's history. At least 145,000 Venezuelans in the U.S. were affected by President Trump's order. That order protected them from deportation. To end a humanitarian disaster. For years, the former president had vowed to restore democracy in Venezuela. His administration threatened military action, imposed broad sanctions on Venezuela and its business partners,

and talked a lot about what he sees as the pitfalls of socialism. This is from a speech Trump gave in 2019. Socialism eventually must always give rise to tyranny, which it does. But it wasn't until 16 hours before he left office that Trump moved to protect Venezuelans here in the U.S. That order he signed protected certain Venezuelan migrants who were in the U.S. illegally from deportation for 18 months. It also happened to be good politics for Republicans in Florida. That state has a large Venezuelan community.

And now the new administration wants to do more. I'm just not satisfied that anyone has a good plan that we think can deliver the results that we all share and seek. That's Secretary of State Antony Blinken in his January confirmation hearing when he endorsed temporary protected status for Venezuelan refugees. That's a more stable, long-term protection. Here's an exchange with Blinken and New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez, a Democrat. I think that people who are fighting for freedom and then ultimately have to flee temporary protective status for Venezuelans here in the United States.

President-elect's committed to that. Well, that's fantastic to hear. Consider this. In the U.S., there has been a lot of talk about more help for the people of Venezuela. But another country in the Americas is actually going much farther. I spoke to Colombia's president, Ivan Duque, about his efforts to set an example that he hopes the U.S. will follow. From NPR, I'm Ari Shapiro. It's Friday, March 5th. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies.

Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the Wise app today or visit wise.com. T's and C's apply. Hey y'all, I'm Sam Sanders, host of It's Been a Minute. There is a lot going on in the world. So on my show, my guest and I make sense of the news and culture through conversation. It feels like we're living in three movies at once. That's a good way to put it. It feels like we're living in three movies at once. That's a good way to put it. It feels like a Mike Judge movie. It feels like a Spike Lee movie. And it feels like a Michael Bay movie. Every Tuesday and Friday, listen and subscribe now to It's Been a Minute from NPR. It's Consider This from NPR. For years now, Venezuela has been a country in crisis.

Under authoritarian leader Nicolás Maduro, millions of people have fled. They are escaping a total breakdown in public services, shortages of running water, electricity, and gasoline. The country built its economy on oil over decades. And when the price of oil crashed, Venezuela's leaders manipulated the currency, which backfired and made cash basically worthless. When I traveled to the region in 2019, I met a man on the side of the road in the Colombian city of Cucuta, on the border with Venezuela. He was selling these little paper sculptures he had made, like swans, purses, owls, and trucks. All of the paper was Venezuelan currency, bolivars. The bill itself isn't worth anything anymore. It doesn't have any value. People will throw it away. They'll tear it up.

And that's why I started using the bills to make bags and other things. When you were a child, this was worth a lot of money. How does it feel today to see how worthless it is? I never imagined working with money. I used to make these things out of magazines or candy wrappers. Back in the day, this stack of cash would be a ton of money. You could buy food, give some extra to your girlfriend. Now, it's worthless. The economic situation in Venezuela has been so bad for so long

that the vast majority of people there are living in poverty. The main universities of Venezuela published a household survey that they carry out every year. And the findings were absolutely heartbreaking. Economist Gabriela Sade grew up in Venezuela. They found out that Venezuela has 79% extreme poverty. She's saying nearly 80% of Venezuelans were living in extreme poverty, and that was before the pandemic. So right before the pandemic hit the country, you see people, you know, asking you for money for food, and you see entire families trying to look for food in

the garbage. You have that situation plus the economic contraction and mass migration. So it's just, you know, the perfect storm. All of that, plus a global pandemic, has only made the migration crisis worse. Hundreds of thousands of those refugees have come to the U.S., but millions have fled to Colombia, which shares a major border with Venezuela. And that's where President Iv Ivan Duque recently announced an effort that won international praise from humanitarian and human rights groups. A new policy to give Venezuelan refugees legal status in Colombia with a path to citizenship. Reporter John Otis has this look at what it means for people who live in Colombia.

Since the refugee crisis began six years ago, Colombia has taken in more migrants from neighboring Venezuela than any other country. But about half of the two million Venezuelans who have settled here are undocumented. That makes it harder for migrants to find decent jobs and to gain access to health care and schooling for their children. So, in a speech last month, Colombian President Ivan Duque announced a new policy. Duque said Colombia would provide legal status to nearly all undocumented Venezuelans, allowing them to live and work here for up to 10 years. The surprise move won praise from the Biden administration, Pope Francis, and the UN.

Colombia also stands to benefit from Venezuela's brain drain, as newly arrived doctors, teachers, and engineers will now be able to pursue their careers. Among those pleased about President Duque's announcement is Isaias Bello. He's a 26-year-old Venezuelan who went meat-picking gooseberries on this farm just outside of Bogota. He likes the work, but says previous jobs were hellish. Bello used to work in construction, but as an undocumented Venezuelan, he says his boss could get away with paying him just $8 a day, far less than minimum wage. Some migrants work just for food.

Bello predicts the legalization program will force employers to improve working conditions. I'm very, very happy about this, Bello says. But many Colombians reject the new policy. They include Julian Garzon, who also works on the gooseberry farm. Amid the economic slump caused by the pandemic, Garcon says Venezuelans will take scarce jobs that should go to Colombians. Similar concerns, as well as outright xenophobia, are rising across South America, where countries are putting new restrictions on migrants. In January, Peru sent tanks to its border to halt the flow of undocumented Venezuelans, while the Chilean military airlifted more than 100 migrants back to Venezuela. Here in Colombia, the fact that President Duque's migrant policy is deeply unpopular among his own people makes it all the more admirable, says political analyst Sergio Guzman. I think Duque has always been on the right side of this issue,

and this makes his legacy in terms of international migration something to stand on for the rest of his life. He says Duque is making the best of a refugee crisis that's expected to get much worse. John Otis in Bogota, Colombia. So back to that executive action by President Trump to protect Venezuelans. It's known as deferred enforced departure. And advocates say it was a good start. While DED is definitely a positive step in terms of giving protection to Venezuelans,

it is only the protection against being deported. Betilda Munoz Pogosian is director of social inclusion at the Organization of American States. And she says giving Venezuelans temporary protected status would go a step further. The TPS would actually grant Venezuelans in the U.S. an immigration benefit, a concrete document that says that they're allowed to stay and they're allowed to work. Some lawmakers in Congress have introduced a bill to grant Venezuelans temporary protected status. It could also be granted by the Biden administration's director of homeland security without Congress. Biden has signaled he's open to that, but has not formally issued any commitments. In the meantime, Colombian President Ivan Duque is hoping his

actions encourage the U.S. to move faster. Here's what he told me when we spoke this week. In this particular case, with the TPS that we have granted for the Venezuelan citizens, I also believe that that's something that can be considered by the U.S. I think it's a way to demonstrate that in the Western Hemisphere in the 21st century, we can think of a different, more intelligent, and more socially viable migration policies. And this gets at something I wanted to discuss in more detail with President Duque, because in an age of increasing global migration, fueled by climate change and the ease of travel, many countries around the world are fortifying their borders, making it

harder to come in. But not Colombia. So I asked President Duque why. This is something that we feel proud. We're not a rich country. But we consider that since we have been undertaking most of the fiscal burden of this situation, with our decision, we want to raise this issue before the eyes of the world and mobilize more donor capacity. So this is also a call for the international community to support this humanitarian action. all over the world, countries are either saying, we make this a welcoming country for immigrants, and so we bring people into the economic fold, or if we make life more difficult for immigrants, maybe we won't have the burden of more people coming to our country. And we see both of those approaches. In the United States, we see both of those approaches back to back in two administrations. And so tell us why you lean towards the former rather than the latter philosophically.

Because, Ari, what I have seen throughout my life is that when there are massive flows of migration, the world, and especially in recent years, has been reacting with xenophobia or has been reacting with a negation of the problem. I think those approaches have been negative. And at the end of the day, we have already the people in Colombia. So once you regularize, well, people can open bank accounts, people can buy houses, people can work and can work legitimately without disturbing or disrupting the opportunities for the Colombian people. All the information that we have gathered about migration movements in the world, and especially driven by humanitarian conditions and the destruction of economic capacity, is that they don't stay for a year, nor two, nor three, nor five.

They likely stay for more than a decade. So it's better to do things with a focalized policy and to open them the opportunity to contribute also to the Colombian economy. You argue that this policy will help Colombian workers, but this is not a politically popular policy. A reporter in Colombia, John Otis, has been talking with people in the country who are afraid that this is going to take away the jobs that are already scarce in the pandemic recession. And as you know, when German Chancellor Angela Merkel put a similar policy in place for Syrian refugees, there was a big political backlash against her party. Are you worried about the same? Ari, when you have to act thinking of what's good for humanity, what is good for Colombia, what is good for the world, you cannot think on short-term political consequences. I'm not running for re-election.

And what is clear is that that 1.7 million people are already in Colombia. They're already here. And some of them have been abused because they get paid below the conditions of a Colombian worker just because they are informal. So if you regularize, it shouldn't crowd out the jobs for the Colombian people. And if there's a conflict, a political conflict, I think that political conflict will be solved in a sense that the recovery of our economy is going to open opportunities for the Colombians, but also for the migrants that are recovery of our economy is going to open opportunities for the Colombians, but also for the migrants that are already in our country.

Colombian President Ivan Duque. By the way, you heard him say he's not running for re-election. That's because in Colombia, you can't. A 2015 law restricted presidents there to a single four-year term. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Ari Shapiro. Support for NPR and the following message come from the Kauffman Foundation, providing access to opportunities that help people achieve financial stability, upward mobility, and economic prosperity, regardless of race, gender, or geography.