The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Filippo Grandi (L) bumps elbows with Colombia's President Ivan Duque (R) during the announcement of the granting of temporary protection to Venezuelan migrants in Bogota, Colombia February 8, 2021. /Reuters
Colombia will give temporary protected status to almost one million undocumented Venezuelan migrants, President Ivan Duque said on Monday during a visit by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi.
The move will normalize the status of migrants and refugees, in a bid to provide them with legal residence permits and facilitate their access to health care and legal employment opportunities.
Colombia's government estimates that 1.8 million Venezuelans currently live in the country, having fled economic and political crises in their homeland, and that 55 percent of them don't have proper residence papers.
"We've published the decision of our country to create a temporary protected status in Colombia that allows us to normalize these migrants in our country," Duque said, speaking in Bogota alongside Grandi.
Migrants who are in the country illegally will be eligible for 10-year residence permits, while migrants who are currently on temporary residence will be able to extend their stay.
The registration process will include migrants' socioeconomic situation and a biometric record, said Duque.
"The announcement by Colombia to grant temporary protection for Venezuelans in their territory for a 10-year period is an emblematic humanitarian gesture for the region... even for the whole world," Grandi said.
According to the UN, 5.4 million Venezuelans have fled the country since 2015 and a third are in Colombia, with several million scattered in other Latin American countries.
In December, Duque came under fire when he announced that undocumented Venezuelans would not be included in Colombia's immunization process against the novel coronavirus, due to begin on February 20.
He later revised that position and asked for international help after criticizing what he called a "meager" response from organizations and other countries to Latin America's worst migration crisis.
Grandi said the new move to grant Venezuelans temporary protected status will allow "greater vaccination coverage" in Colombia, which has a population of 50 million but has already racked up more than two million coronavirus cases, with 55,900 deaths.