Colombia’s Plan to Welcome Millions of Venezuelan Migrants | Hacker News Reader

Colombia’s Plan to Welcome Millions of Venezuelan Migrants

theatlantic.com

53 pointscurtis40 comments

I applaud Colombia for this. I really hope international pressure does its job and gets Venezuela back on track. I understand Russian and China wanting to secure their investments in the country, but the cost is taking its toll. I dont know how someone like Maduro can really live with himself and his lifestyle when so many are suffering.I also have read that U.S. sanctions are to blame, i dont know if this is true or just government corruption.

I wish the US would do a fast track for Venezuelan migrants, or at least i hope we provide aide to Colombia to help with expenses.

And if Argentina is helping too they get massive kudos as well.

> I applaud Columbia for this […]

> […] i hope we provide aide to Columbia to help with expenses

Just so you know, the English spelling is “Colombia” (O instead of U) [1].

If you say “Columbia” (U instead of O) you are talking about the historical female personification of the United States of America, and a poetic name for the Americas [2]. I don’t know why people make this mistake so many times, even looking at this list [3] I cannot find any reference to “Columbia” as the name for the country.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colombia

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_(name)

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia

Point taken, I have updated my post with the correct spelling.

I am use to typing it that way for the District of Columbia. That is not an excuse, but that is why it is probably misspelled a lot.

Same here. As someone who lives in British Columbia, I always conflate the two.

Americans make the mistake because there are major things named Columbia here, including a major river, the C in Washinton, DC, an Ivy League university, a state capitol, the C in CBS, a record label, a movie studio, a space shuttle that tragically exploded, and many more that I'm sure the Wikipedia page lists (I only typed out those I knew of off the top of my head).

The misspelling of the country is a pet peeve of mine as well, but I don't think it's confusing why people make it - they simply think it's spelled the same way as all of the other Columbia's they read about.

The US has worked from day one do destabilize any kind of government in Venezuela, having openly supported coups and now a blockade that is disrupting oil production, which is the main trading of that country. To say at this point that the economic and social situation of Venezuela is just the fault of Venezuelan leaders (whatever their problems might be) is baffling and a plain lie. The current US government is openly supporting an intervention to control Venezuelan's oil, so for me it is not a surprise that the people and the army forces of Venezuela are backing their government, the same way that I see no surprise that the Iran government receives popular support despite all its problems. The US and American people should do a mea culpa and stop what they are doing to destabilize the world.

Venezuelan oil production dipped dramatically before any serious US sanctions were introduced.

The nationalization of the oil industry and replacing professionals with incompetent cronies was the cause of Venezuela’s current crisis, not something the US orchestrated.

See https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2017/05/07/how-venezuel...

From a couple years ago. I saw a more recent graph somewhere and the problems have grown even more acute.

OPEC (which Venezuela is a member of) opted to open the taps in 2014 to counter rising competition from US fracking[1]. The drop in oil price was at least in part of their own creation!

Additionally, the Venezuelan policy choices since Chavez have significantly reduced economic diversity and increased reliance on Oil, and the population's reliance on the state oil companies.[2]

1: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/dec/07/opec-plan-k... 2: (warning pdf) https://web.archive.org/web/20131021050303/http://larc.ucalg...

By the time Venezuela stability is restored, oil will be worthless if not banned.

> To say at this point that the economic and social situation of Venezuela is just the fault of Venezuelan leaders (whatever their problems might be) is baffling and a plain lie.

Its mainly the fault of ppl who failed to develop any other kind of industry and becoming too used oil wealth. The book "Crude Nation"is a pretty good writing on how things got to how it got to be. Did america tell them to give free oil venezueleans. Did america ask them cripple their own oil industres by nationalising and corrupting them. Did america stop venezuela from creating sovereign wealth funds like Norway and the United Arab Emirates.

Blaming everything on America is just boring and cliched.

Describing this as 'radical' (in the actual title of the article!), 'impressive', etc. says more about the current worldview of western democracies on basic humanitarian solidarity than it says about Colombia.

Isn't free travel within the EU just as 'radical'? And haven't western democracies already accepted many millions of migrants? The US alone accepts one million immigrants per year.

1. Refugees are not migrants. 2. A few thousands refugees almost broke Europe (excluding Germany and Sweden). Extreme right on the rise pretty much everywhere (including Germany and Sweden). And we're talking about the richest countries in the World. Compare that with Colombia, Jordan, Lebanon to name but 3 countries.

> The US alone accepts one million immigrants per year.

"of whom about 600,000 are Change of Status who already are in the U.S". However, it's not about immigration.

How many Syrian/Libyan/Afghan/Venezuelan/Iraqi _refugees_ did the US take in the last 5 years? (You've probably noticed that the examples I cited are not random).

'A few thousand refugees' is an interesting way of putting it. "From July 2015 to May 2016, more than 1 million people applied for asylum in Europe.": http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/06/15/immigrant-sh...

This is all on top of an already significant immigrant population - in Germany alone there are 19.3 million people with immigrant background: https://www.dw.com/en/german-population-with-immigrant-backg...

The vast majority of the refugees in Europe are in 2 countries: Germany and Sweden. Read my comment above. The rest of European countries, including France and central Europe, essentially reacted by voting for populists (borderline fascists in some countries).

Your second comment on Germany is totally irrelevant.

And 1 million people for Europe is nothing considering the total population and wealth of the union. As I write in the comment you ignored: some of the poorest and smallest countries in the world took in more than a million refugees and without help.

How is the number of foreigners already in a country irrelevant, when deciding whether to admit more? From the perspective of the host country, migrants or refugees makes no difference.

And it's 1 million in one year, but 5 million since 2008. Unlike with Colombia, almost none are from neighboring countries. That's counting only refugees, not total immigrants: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_migrant_crisis#Asylum...

Given these numbers, is there any amount of immigrants the EU/US would have to accept, to be considered sufficient?

It's a pity but you keep using words like immigrants and foreigners and mixing concepts and numbers.

There's no point in continuing this exchange.

the government of Argentina has also been very welcoming and expedient with Venezuelan migrants, turning around documentation for the ability to work in as quickly as 2 weeks.

here's a decent presentation (english): https://robuenosaires.iom.int/sites/default/files/Informes/N...

Meanwhile my country seems determined to wreck it's medium term outlook to get back powers it never have up because of a xenophobic reaction to immigration which was in total a net benefit.

It's damn embarrassing.

Half my country of billion ppl will be in USA if they have open borders :D .

Half of a lot of countries would be here to live the american dream. Problem is with open borders and that big of an influx of people the American dream would be watered down.

America was built on immigration and the process should be refined to be easier, however there has to be a sustainable limit per year. Can you imagine if the Governemt here gave free healthcare to all and then opened the borders. The country would sink.

I hope Colombia can handle the influx of people. If not i hope international aide can work to give assistance.

I am ignorant here, do Colombia and Venezuela speak the same dialect of spanish? I.E. are there communication issues (We have someone here from Mexico and someone from Puerto Rico and some things get lost in translation i am told).

Unless there are any hyper-local slang terms, there should be no communication issues.

An analogy from an American perspective: it would be like someone from NJ speaking with someone from Georgia. Yeah, there might be mild differences - e.g. soda vs pop - but overall it is the same Spanish.

EDIT: I mean "Georgia" the state in USA, and not the country.

Argentinian Spanish (or Castellano as it is proudly called) is pretty unique but there's absolutely no issues communicating from any other Spanish speaking nation.

the issue is the same across all Spanish dialects, each country has unique words and phrases (the word for pineapple is different here vs. rest of Spanish speaking world, one of many examples) and occasionally slightly distinct grammar (e.g. voseo).

people are generally able to quickly infer that other Spanish speakers are not native due to accents and vocabulary/grammar. if you're American, think about how you'd react if you heard someone say "mate" in a foreign accent: you'd know they weren't American but may be British, Australian, New Zealander, ... (??)

That's interesting. I looked at the link and didn't see reference to 'ability work as quickly as 2 weeks'. Did I miss it, or do you have another reference? Thanks.

I'm a Venezuelan myself and while I haven't migrated yet, I have tons of friends who have.

The claim is probably true but the timelines I've heard are more around the 3 weeks mark. I feel the point still stands though.

Migration in latin america has some advantages akin to the eurozone. You can even travel without a passport through land and most countries will issue working permits in a few weeks.

that part was from friends who have immigrated here, so personal reference, ha. you may be able to find something if you speak Spanish but i have not looked. as the other reply said, it may fluctuate somewhat.

Thank you very much.

of course! if i can help in any other way, let me know.

Argentina is and always will be very welcoming of immigrants: it's in the introduction of our constitution.

"...secure the benefits of freedom, for us, our posterity and for all men of the world that wish to inhabit Argentinian soil..."

Interesting facet of the policy - even wanted Nazi party members were allowed to migrate to Argentina after the war, and oftentimes extradition requests were refused. Combine that with close relations with Israel, and that is why Argentina became famous for international Nazi-hunting intrigue both historically and in fiction.

https://www.jweekly.com/1995/09/01/argentine-court-blocks-to...

Coincidentally, the famous Schindler also emigrated to Argentina. Jews and Nazis alike went to argentina.

It also helped that argentina in the 1920's was the richest country in the world, and it has the size of most of europe while it had almost no people.

This is absolutely AWESOME! Kudos to Colombia; and any other country that opens their borders like this!

One of the coolest things that could happen long-term, is that these Venezuelan migrants start businesses, stay in Colombia, and contribute positively to the overall economy of Colombia...ultimately making their lives better, the lives of Colombians better, and showing the xenophobic parts of the world, that, yes, immigrants into one's country is a good thing!

Agreed, though " [...] showing the xenophobic parts of the world, that, yes, immigrants into one's country is a good thing!"

We actually don't need a colombian experiment to know this. It's all over the history books.

"if the best possible outcome happens, it will show all those xenophobes they were wrong".

Likewise, will you revise your viewpoints if the end result is less positive?

I wonder how easier it gets with populations of common roots. How different the languages and cultures ? the closer the easier.

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