Few Latin American leaders have been more critical of Nicolás Maduro than Argentina’s Javier Milei, who was one of the first to reject the Venezuelan leader’s recent victory in the July 28 elections.
In a new and strong signal of its policy towards Venezuela, the Argentine government announced this Friday the launch of a special regime to resolve the immigration situation of thousands of citizens of that country affected by the closure of the Venezuelan consulate in Buenos Aires.
The proposal benefits Venezuelans with expired documents who have not been able to renew them due to the withdrawal of Bolivarian consular representatives after the elections and the restrictions imposed by the Maduro government on processing documentation.
The new resolution published by the National Directorate of Migration (DNM) relaxes the requirements for entering the country and to regularize the immigration status of Venezuelans who are already in Argentina.
Venezuelan Elisa Trotta, general secretary of the Argentine Forum for the Defense of Democracy (FADD), who, together with the NGO Alliance for Venezuela, urged the Argentine government to take this measure, explained the changes through social networks.
“Now all Venezuelans will be able to enter Argentina with their identity card or passport, even if they are expired”, he said, detailing that up to 10 years of expiration will be allowed.
“Children under 9 years old may enter exceptionally with a birth certificate,” he added.
The Venezuelan activist reported that this special regime will be in effect for the next 90 days.
Even those who do not have a Venezuelan identity card or passport can prove their identity through a sworn statement, provided that the person has entered the country legally and is registered in the Immigration database.
The DNM justified this exceptional regime by stating that Venezuelans “have abandoned their country of origin in conditions of extreme vulnerability and with expired travel documentation or no documentation at all.”
And that this situation “has been drastically aggravated by the indefinite closure of the diplomatic representation of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in our country.”
“Migratory limbo”
Trotta explained that it was not only the recent closure of the Venezuelan consulate ordered by Maduro after the last elections that harmed Venezuelans in Argentina.
“This measure that we achieved also comes to correct the migratory limbo in which more than 10,000 Venezuelans were left during the government of Alberto Fernándezfollowing the repeal of resolution 520/2019, enacted by the government of Mauricio Macri, which had relaxed the entry and settlement requirements,” he said.
The Interagency Coordination Platform for Refugees and Migrants (R4V) estimates that some 164,000 Venezuelans reside in Argentina.
The figure is considerably lower than the number of migrants in other countries in the region such as Colombia (2.86 million), Peru (1.5 million), Brazil (568,000) and Chile (533,000).
The figure is surely a reflection of the harsh and prolonged economic crisis that Argentina is going through, which in 2023 surpassed Venezuela as the country in the region – and even in the world – with the highest inflation.
However, Venezuelans who choose to stay in Argentina often praise the warmth with which they are received.
“In many other Latin American countries, Venezuelans are victims of xenophobia. On the contrary, In Argentina we are a respected community. “We Venezuelans feel grateful to this beautiful country,” Larry Montes, a Venezuelan architect who has lived in Buenos Aires since 2017, told BBC Mundo at the end of 2023.
Milei vs Maduro
The Venezuelan president, in power since 2013, and the Argentine, who became president in December of last year, are in the ideological antipodes and they have crossed insults on several occasions.
The clashes worsened after the Argentine, very close to Washington, handed over to the United States authorities last February a Venezuelan aircraft that was detained in Buenos Aires as part of a terrorism investigation.
The Boeing 747 of the Venezuelan airline Emtrasur, which was carrying Venezuelan and Iranian crew members, had been detained by Argentine authorities in June 2022, after being stranded at Ezeiza International Airport in Buenos Aires due to lack of fuel.
The US requested the seizure of the plane after alleging that the aircraft was used to carry out covert operations by Venezuelan and Iranian agents in Latin America.
In response to Milei’s action, Maduro banned Argentine planes from flying over Venezuelan airspace.
Last July, when the official data of the elections for a possible third consecutive term of the Venezuelan had not yet been released, the Argentine president announced on social networks that “the communist dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro”had come to an end.
“The data announce a landslide victory for the opposition and the world is waiting for him to acknowledge defeat after years of socialism, misery, decadence and death,” he said, adding that “Argentina will not acknowledge another fraud, and expects the Armed Forces to defend democracy and the popular will this time.”
Hours later, Maduro responded: “From Caracas I say: no to Milei’s fascist Nazi. He also has the face of a monster. He’s ugly, stupid. You can’t stand me one round“cowardly bug”.
The president also ordered the Closure of the Argentine embassy in Caracas -as did the delegations from six other countries that did not recognise his victory-, a measure that was made official on 1 August.
The Argentine diplomatic representation was left in the hands of Brazil, which also promised to protect the six opponents who had been sheltered in the Argentine embassy since March of this year.
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