Around two million more Venezuelans are expected to flee their country during 2019, according to a United Nations forecast released Friday in Geneva. If true, the total number of Venezuelan migrants could reach 5.3 million a year from now.
As Peru's deadline for granting residency nears, 6,000 Venezuelans lined up at the border Peru's Tuesday hoping to be allowed in, while 4,000 more are expected to join in the next two days, according to the ombudsman's office.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, made a visit to the Colombian-Venezuelan border to understand the dimensions of the exodus of Venezuelans that, according to the UN statistics, 1.9 million have left Venezuela since 2015 due the Venezuela's economic and social situation.
Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro replied to Donald Trump's UN speech saying his comments were an apology for America’s history of colonialism in the region and offered words of support for the sanctioned officials who joined him during an event broadcast over state television.
Eleven Latin American countries say that they have agreed to allow Venezuelans leaving their homeland to enter their countries even if their travel documents have expired. More than 2.3 million Venezuelans have fled the country's hyperinflation and severe shortages, but many do not have valid passports because renewing them can take years.
The Brazilian government may restrict entrance of Venezuelans at the border in the remote northwestern state of Roraima, President Michel Temer said on Wednesday, after a flood of migrants has strained local services and sparked violence with residents.
A group of Venezuelan migrants has returned home from Peru at the expense of Nicolas Maduro's government. Facing an exodus from Venezuela, Maduro had proclaimed his countrymen “won't be slaves to anyone in the world.”
The exodus of migrants from Venezuela is building towards a crisis moment comparable to events involving refugees in the Mediterranean, the United Nations migration agency said.
During the conference entitled The democratic challenge to the autocracies of the 21st century in Latin America, organized by the Center for the Opening and Development of Latin America (CADAL) on Tuesday at the Senate of Uruguay, the Government of Venezuela was described as a dictatorship and it was exhorted that the democratic governments of the region, especially the Uruguayan government, not be indifferent or accomplices against today’s Latin America’s autocratic governments.
The Ministry of the Interior of Peru has announced that as of the dawn of next Saturday, August 25, Venezuelans will be required to present their passport to be admitted to the country. This measure coincides with that taken by Ecuador this week when it reached record figures in the entry of Venezuelan citizens in that country. The National Superintendency of Migrations of Peru recorded last Saturday the largest number of Venezuelan citizens who entered the country in a single day: more than 5,100.