“I ask all Colombians to return from Chile, Argentina and the United States because they are going to be treated like slaves and like dogs chased through the streets,” said the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, last week during a public intervention in Bogotá. He made reference, specifically, to the controversial ICE raids in the United States, with whose president, Donald Trump, he was going to meet next.
“I don’t think there is going to be a Colombian return migration,” says sociologist Fernando Urrea, emeritus researcher at the Universidad del Valle, in Colombia. And the country has a complete catalog of policies to facilitate the return. “There has been one from the United States because of this expulsion policy,” he explains. “It is no longer a country to migrate to,” he says. And in Chile, he says, it remains to be seen if the announced policies of the new president, José Antonio Kast, more directed against Venezuelan immigrants, have a similar effect.
Colombia, a country of migrants
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Colombians have emigrated abroad constantly for decades. In the seventies of the last century, the main destination was, precisely, the United States. Then it was Venezuela and, since the 1990s, Spain. Currently, it is estimated that there are about six million Colombians outside the country, which has an official population of 53 million inhabitants..
However, Colombian emigration has been evolving. “Today it is an emigration of a higher educational level,” explains Urrea. Yes, more women than men continue to emigrate. And there is more diversification, both socioeconomic and ethnic. “It follows very similar patterns to internal emigration,” he summarizes. And, although the range of destinations has expanded, including New Zealand and Australia, Spain continues to be the main destination.
More than a million in Spain
According to the National Institute of Statistics Spanish, at the beginning of last year the number of residents in Spain born in Colombia was already close to one million people. A milestone that will undoubtedly have been surpassed when the data is updated.
This has to do, explains Urrea, “obviously with the language”, but also with favorable policies. And he gives as an example the announced regularization of more than half a million foreign residents, of which Colombians are the largest group. “And in Zapatero’s time it was also the same,” he says in reference to the previous regularization of this type, in 2005.
There are also important colonies of Colombians in France, Italy, the United Kingdom and other European countries.
In Germany, for example, the number of Colombian residents is estimated at around 60,000. The Colombian community is not even among the forty main foreign communities in the country, according to official statisticsalthough its presence in the health or elderly care sectors stands out, as well as a growing number of students and academic researchers.
This is repeated in the rest of European countries. “I have many former students of mine who went to Spain ten or fifteen years ago and have stabilized there,” Urrea gives as an example.
Easier for skilled migrants
Liliana Zambrano is a professor of International Relations at the University of Deusto, in Bilbao. “I am privileged,” she says, remembering that she came from Colombia “for love.”
“My process was easy from an administrative point of view, because by marriage I had immediate residence and after two years I could apply for nationality,” he explains. Other Colombians, many who arrived in the country after the signing of the peace treaty in Colombia, did not have it so easy.
“Yes, there has been this type of migration related to everything that has to do with post-armed conflict, post-peace process violence,” he explains. However, insecurity in the territories, criminality, extortion “are not classified within the conditions for granting asylum, if it is not direct political persecution,” he explains. In several European countries, he highlights, there are good immigration programs for qualified people.
More difficult for asylum seekers
However, it is not always easy. Her friend Angélica Padilla, also Colombian, works at Zehar’s psychological service in the Basque Country. Coordinates a network of fifteen psychologists who provide care to asylum seekers of any nationality.
They often face rejection, uprooting and, in too many cases, low-skilled jobs, he explained in a recent interview in The Maila regional newspaper. “Administrative regularization is very important. The moment you have a work permit, you can access more dignified conditions,” he said.
Fernando Urrea insists on the opportunity that the regularization of migrants in Spain represents. “The right-wing wave in Europe will also affect Colombians,” it is feared. “Although less than immigrants from other origins, such as North Africans or South Africans,” he clarifies. In Italy, says Zambrano, with contacts in the country, these administrative obstacles have already begun to be noticed.
As part of the variation in the profile of Colombian migration, Urrea also places its political turn: “Before they were more conservative, today Petro also won abroad,” he recalls. “It devastated Barcelona,” he gives as an example.
(rml)
