On June 1, President Guillermo Lasso signed the decree to regularize the process of Venezuelan migrants. – 2024-04-02 14:42:03

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The offer to regularize Venezuelan migrants in Ecuador comes from the electoral campaign.

In June 2021, President Guillermo Lasso announced the regularization of Venezuelan migrants. On December 18, the government presented its plan to the conference of donors, which are governments and organizations that financially support attention to the migration crisis.

Almost a year after the first announcement and six months after the second, the president signed Executive Decree No. 436 in which he provides for granting immigration amnesty and beginning the extraordinary regularization process for people of Venezuelan nationality. For this, the president ordered as a first step that the Ministry of the Interior carry out a permanent immigration registration process.

You will have a period of three months for this. Afterwards, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will be in charge of the process for the extraordinary regulation, by granting an Exceptional Temporary Residence Visa for Venezuelan Citizens (Virte). The entity will have four months to organize the process: dictate secondary regulations and establish the necessary procedures. The visa will be free and will be valid for two years, renewable once. To carry out the procedure, the Ecuadorian Government will recognize the passports of Venezuelan citizens as valid “up to five years after the date of their expiration or extension”, as well as the ID cards.

After the visa is granted, the Civil Registry will issue the respective identity card and Venezuelan citizens “will have the rights and obligations provided for in Ecuadorian legislation.” The immigration amnesty, on the other hand, will benefit Venezuelan migrants who, because they are in an irregular immigration situation, “have been sanctioned or are susceptible to an immigration, administrative or pecuniary sanction, as long as they comply with the regulation process” that the ministry will implement. inland. The government versus Venezuelans At the last human mobility table, held in Riobamba, on May 27, Foreign Minister Juan Carlos Holguín announced that Ecuador would begin “the most important regularization process in the history of our country.” In addition, the head of Ecuadorian diplomacy said that the country will take the issue of irregular and risky migration to the Summit of the Americas, which will begin on June 6, in Los Angeles, United States. “The reception and regularization policy has to do with the concept of how we are going to treat migrants in our country and the answer is simple: just as we want Ecuadorian migrants to be treated in other countries.”