Most Latin AMerican Migrants No Longer Go To The United States

The Americas | Migration Most Latin American migrants no longer go to the United States Can the region cope with a new wave? Venezuelan migrant holds his daughter while resting in a hammock Photograph: AP Feb 13th 2025|Cúcuta Save Share Give Listen to this story. Esther Hernández fled Venezuela to Colombia in 2017 with her husband, three daughters and a sewing machine. Her voice cracks as she recalls sleeping in a shelter, cooking on an open fire and at times going hungry. Her husband left for Chile in 2018, desperate for work. He eventually got a construction job in Puerto Montt, some 8,000km (5,000 miles) away. Ms Hernández built up a sewing business. Saving furiously, and with regularised legal status in Colombia, the family eventually bought land in El Zulia, a small village near the Venezuelan border. Brick by brick she built a house there. Now, after six years away, her husband is coming home at last. “I am a Zuliana now,” she smiles. If you listen to American politicians you might think that every migrant in Latin America is heading for the United States. In the past most did, but not any more. The Hernández family, rather than those who make for the United States, is now typical of Latin American migrants. Between 2015 and 2022 the number of intra-regional migrants in Latin America and the Caribbean soared by nearly 7m to almost 13m. Over the same period the number of migrants from the region living in the United States increased by just 1m. Map: The Economist Most of those migrants are Venezuelans fleeing dictatorship and economic chaos. Some 8m now live outside Venezuela, 85% of those in Latin America and the Caribbean. They are joined by Nicaraguans, also ditching dictatorship, who tend to make for Costa Rica. Haitians, escaping the horror of their gang-run state, also tend to settle in Latin America and the Caribbean, particularly in the Dominican Republic and Chile. With a 2,200km border with Venezuela, Colombia is on the front line. Some 2.8m Venezuelans live there, one in every 20 people in Colombia. The country has been remarkably welcoming. In 2017 it opened the first of a series of schemes giving some Venezuelans access to health care and education, and the right to work, for two years. In 2021 it went further, guaranteeing Venezuelans who had arrived before February that year most of the rights enjoyed by Colombians, even if they had entered the country irregularly. This scheme lasts for a decade, and provides a path to permanent residency and citizenship. Almost 2m Venezuelans, including Ms Hernández, have already received their new identity card under this scheme. Some 350,000 more applications are being processed. This warm welcome can be seen at the Centro Abrazar (roughly, hugging centre) in Bogotá, a kindergarten-cum-migrant-centre funded by the city’s government. Mere days after long, scary journeys, dozens of Venezuelan children twirl and sing, wearing paper sashes decorated in crayon with their favourite word about themselves (“happy”, “beautiful”, “brave”). The centre is free, open every day of the year and, crucially, helps new arrivals quickly get their papers in order and their children registered in Bogotá’s school system. A nativist might expect such a welcome to lead to severe economic disruption. Yet migrants did not push up unemployment among local workers, even in Colombia. The wages of less-educated and informal workers did fall in Brazil, Colombia and Ecuador, but the decrease was usually small and temporary. The IMF estimates that since 2017, Venezuelan migrants have increased annual GDP growth by an average of 0.1 percentage points in receiving countries like Panama, and by 0.2 in Colombia, a boost which will last until 2030. Hospitals and schools feel the strain, nowhere more so than in Colombia. In 2019 the country spent 0.5% of its GDP looking after migrants, according to the IMF. Spending has declined since then to around 0.3% of GDP. The IMF says the costs will be balanced over time by rising tax revenues as more migrants enter the labour force. Quick regularisation is helpful, as it brings down health-care costs as well as boosting the tax take. Many Latin Americans, especially Chileans, think migrants bring crime. A study by Nicolás Ajzenman of McGill University and co-authors, which examined data from between 2008 and 2017, found that when the proportion of migrants in a given part of Chile doubles, the share of people there who say crime is either their biggest or second-biggest concern jumps by 19 percentage points, relative to the nationwide mean of 36%. But they found no impact on crime of any sort. Colombia saw an increase in violent crime near the border in 2016, when migration was surging, but the victims tended to be Venezuelan, suggesting it is migrants who bear the risks. Still, crime has risen overall in Chile in recent years. Politicians blame migrants. The influx of black Haitians also “triggered much more evident racism”, says Ignacio Eissmann of the Jesuit Migrant Service in Chile, an NGO. Attitudes are hardening elsewhere, too. Between 2020 and 2023 the share of Costa Ricans who say migrants damage the country jumped by 15 percentage points to 65%. In Peru and Ecuador four in five people believe the same. Governments—most of which were welcoming initially—are reaching their limits. From 2018 Chile demanded that Venezuelans and Haitians must get a visa before coming. Peru and Ecuador started demanding the same of Venezuelans in 2019. It is now nearly impossible for Venezuelans to get a visa at home; after Nicolás Maduro stole the election in July, all three countries closed their embassies there. Chile’s leftist president, Gabriel Boric, says the country cannot take more migrants. Regularisation has stopped, and he is pushing to widen deportation powers. Peru’s government has made it much harder for migrants to regularise their status. In theory migrant children can attend school regardless. In practice the missing paperwork often blocks them. Brazil and Colombia remain relatively generous. Carlos Fernando Galán, the mayor of Bogotá, says political leaders have a responsibility “to ensure there is not more xenophobia, to show the benefits that migration can bring”. Yet angry voices are growing louder. Almost 70% of Colombians think that migrants cause an increase in crime. That may be why Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s president, has been slow to introduce new regularisation schemes for recent Venezuelan arrivals. (He recently announced a scheme so restrictive that few will benefit.) “The central government has gone backwards,” sighs Gaby Arellano of the Together We Can Foundation, an NGO which helps Venezuelans. Mr Maduro’s rule in Venezuela is becoming more despotic. Arrivals to Colombia have increased since July 2024, though official numbers are unreliable. The border is riddled with trochas (illegal crossings); at official crossings people are often waved through without a document check. Some say the Maduro regime’s persistence makes little difference to migration. “Whoever comes will be manageable,” says Jorge Acevedo, mayor of the border town of Cúcuta. His words reflect Colombia’s welcoming spirit, but his city is now dealing with an influx of Colombians displaced by violence in the nearby region of Catatumbo. More Venezuelans could break a strained system. Whoever comes, Colombia, Peru and the region, not the United States, will again feel the biggest impact. ■ Sign up to El Boletín, our subscriber-only newsletter on Latin America, to understand the forces shaping a fascinating and complex region. Explore more Venezuela Immigration The Americas United States