More than 500 thousand Venezuelans with expired passports could enter and transit through Colombia

Bogotá, March 8, 2019 – While the dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro tries to curb the success of Venezuelans by not issuing passports to these nationals, the Colombian government will extend the validity of Venezuelan passports for two years, counted to starting of the expiration date of this document.

The measure, which is part of the provisions included in Colombia within the Lima Group, was announced by the Director General of Migration Colombia, Christian Krüger Sarmiento, in the city of Pasto, where he says that instead of 500 thousand Venezuelans that could benefit from this decision.

“More than one million Venezuelan citizens are published in the application for the issuance or renewal of their passport. A procedure that is currently almost impossible to perform due to the high treatment of the document, the lack of raw material for the preparation of the same and the interest of the Maduro dictatorship to stop the departure of Venezuelans from that country. With the decision that today the National Government will take to extend the validity of the passports that are due or close to expiration, for a term of two years, counted from the expiration date, we will once again hold out our hand to the Venezuelan people. “A people that the dictatorship wants to condemn to confinement, but in Colombia, and we are sure that in other countries of the region, find a helping hand willing to help,” corresponds Krüger Sarmiento.

The decision to extend the validity of the expired Venezuelan passports was taken by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs through Resolution 0872 of March 05, 2019 and would apply to all Venezuelan passports that are currently expired or that are about to expire .

According to the head of the Colombian migration authority, what is sought with this type of measures is to order the migratory phenomenon and give security to the migrants when they cross the borders, preventing them from falling into the hands of migrant trafficking networks, of those groups criminals who take advantage of human needs and treat people as merchandise.

“For a country there is nothing more dangerous than not knowing who is inside its territory. Closing the borders or making demands of apostilled documents to a population that flee from a dictatorship and migrates due to hunger and need, the only thing it does is to encourage irregularity and expose the integrity of these people, many of them with small children, on foot and by road. coyotes that play with human life as if it were merchandise, “said the General Director of Migration Colombia, Christian Krüger, who recalled that as of January 31, there were more than 1 million 200 thousand Venezuelans were inside Colombian territory.