It's being called the largest migrant crisis Latin America has ever seen. Desperate Venezuelans are flooding Peru's border with Ecuador. Migration officials from the region are calling an emergency meeting to tackle the crisis as a group. CGTN's Dan Collyns reports from Lima.

As the exodus of migrants from Venezuela reaches a crisis point, Latin America is working out how to cope.

Thousands of Venezuelans fleeing hunger and hyperinflation are flooding border towns across the region.

Particularly, Peru's border with Ecuador, where thousands of Venezuelans have requested asylum just as the country tightened its entry requirements.

Among the migrants was Aracely Pocaterra who was reunited with her four-year-old daughter who arrived from Venezuela:

ARACELY POCATERRA VENEZUELAN MIGRANT "It's not because we want to go, we are here out of necessity, because we are dying there in Venezuela, over there people do not eat well. So what is the point in sending money (to Venezuela) if you can't get anything, if the price of something tomorrow is double. What's that? That's not a life. There is no medicine, there is no transport."

Migration authorities from Peru, Ecuador and Colombia meet this week in Bogota to coordinate their response to the unprecedented crisis.

MICHAEL SHIFTER, PRESIDENT INTER-AMERICAN DIALOGUE "I think the meeting in Bogota, I think it's promising, it's an opportunity to sit down, a little bit overdue, but it's promising. At least it's a step in the right direction and sit down and try to coordinate harmonize policies and try to share the burden on very weak states that have few resources and have no capacity to handle these kinds of the incoming refugees."

More than two million Venezuelans have left their country since 2014. About 400,000 are already in Peru, according to official figures. Peru has offered generous migration opportunities to Venezuelans but that could run out as numbers swell.

DAN COLLYNS LIMA "Since last year, Venezuelans have been able to apply for special residency permits which allow them to work, study and get healthcare. But some employers have taken advantage of their situation to use them as cheap labor, which means some Peruvians are out of a job."

While the government says it's not closing to door to migrants at the street levels tensions are beginning to rise. Dan Collyns CGTN, Lima.