Karen Pinto Duitama
Journalist / La República
The United Nations estimates that nearly eight million Venezuelans have left because of the crisis in their country, and economic pressure that could worsen could lead to another 1.4 million leaving home between the remainder of 2024 and the whole of 2025. That’s putting almost 20% pressure on the expatriate force in Latin American countries and some that seek as their ultimate goal to reach the United States.
According to the Regional Platform for Interagency Coordination for Refugees and Migrants from Venezuela, R4V, which keeps track of Venezuelans who have had to emigrate from their country, of the 7.77 million refugees, migrants and asylum seekers of Venezuelan nationality, 6.59 million have arrived in other Latin American countries by 2023. The number one country with the highest number of Venezuelan arrivals is Colombia with 2.87 million. Then comes Peru with 1.5 million; Brazil with 510,499; Ecuador with 474,945 and Chile with 444,423; so these would be the countries where Venezuelan migration would accelerate the most due to the post-electoral tension.
But other countries in the region to which new migrants would also arrive, based on the behaviour of migration so far, are: Argentina, which added 217,742 Venezuelan people by 2023; the Dominican Republic with 124,141; Mexico (113,108); Panama with 58,158 and Trinidad and Tobago adding another 35,314.
Some countries have updated their data in 2024, including Colombia, which reports that as of January this year the figure has risen to 2.85 million, representing 18,215 fewer people of this nationality in the country.
But with this new political environment, the downward trend in the number of migrants would be halted and new waves of migration would begin. Looking at the legal status of Venezuelans in Colombia, by January 2024 the number of Venezuelan refugees and migrants in regular status is 2,293,006 people, including 384,312 people in the process of Temporary Protection Status and 1.9 million people with a Temporary Protection Permit (PPT) issued. “Although the costs of the reception, regularisation and integration of the migrant population are being incurred, the benefits in the medium and long term far outweigh the costs,” said Stefan Reith of the Konrad Adenaue Foundation.
ECONOMIC CONTRIBUTION TO COLOMBIA
The UN highlighted the role of this foreign community in Colombia and saw that in 2022 alone Venezuelan migrants and refugees generated an economic impact equivalent to US$529.1 million and this will rise to US$804.3 million by the end of 2024, according to data from the International Organization for Migration, which projects a potential increase to more than US$804.3 million. “A remarkable aspect of the study is the high employment rate of Venezuelan migrants, with 90% of the working age population employed and 20% with formal education. Only 18% are employed in their field and many work informally”.
Catalina Arenas Ortiz, migration project manager at Equilibrium SDC, explained that the impact of Venezuelan migration on tax collection is due to the taxes paid by the population when consuming goods and services in the economy and their generation of income. “The conclusions reached are intuitive, the vast majority of people do not exercise their profession, and this is a variable that would increase taxes, income and health”.
The economic impact figure is a characterisation and estimate of the collection of direct taxes (income and Social Security contributions to the Health and Pension Systems) and indirect taxes (Value Added Tax, gasoline and consumption) by the Venezuelan migrant population. It is estimated that in VAT alone, Venezuelans contributed US$203.4 million and US$217 million in direct taxes.
