Colombia has announced that it will give protected status to almost one million undocumented migrants who have fled the consequences of economic collapse in neighbouring Venezuela.
Colombian President Iván Duque said the protected status would last 10 years, allowing the migrants to ‘normalise’ their lives in Colombia, according to a BBC report.
According to United Nations estimates, the migrants are among the five million people who have fled Venezuela since 2015.
Venezuela has been governed for the past 20 years by the socialist PSUV party, first under Hugo Chávez until his death in 2013, and thereafter by Nicolás Maduro.
The country’s economic crisis was precipitated in the early years of socialist rule by wide-scale property seizures. Consequent shortages of basic supplies, including food, fuel and medicine, have prompted the flight from Venezuela.
IRR analysts have long pointed to the Venezuelan experience as a warning of the results of eroding property rights, as well as the risks the African National Congress government is courting in pursuing its expropriation without compensation objectives.