A18 EZ M2 THE WASHINGTON POST.TUESDAY, AUGUST 6 , 2019
BY DYLAN BADDOURbogota — Colombia granted citi-
zenship Monday to more than
24,000 children born to Venezue-
lan migrants on its territory since
2015, as well as to all those who will
be born in the next two years, in an
effort to address a growing problem
in one of the world’s largest refugee
crises: undocumented babies.
“Today we can say, amid difficul-
ties, that the way of xenophobia is
not the right way,” President Iván
Duque told an assembly of U.N.
officials, representatives of other
nongovernmental organizations
and Colombian officials at the
presidential palace. “In defense of
brotherhood, we will attend to this
situation.”
Most nations in the Americas
confer citizenship on babies born
on their territory automatically, but
Colombia requires at least one par-
ent to have legal residence. Duque’s
decree loosens that standard, the
latest move aimed at accommodat-
ing the continuing rush of refugees
from neighboring Venezuela into
this country.
More than 4 million have fled the
hyperinflation, blackouts, and
shortages of water, food and medi-
cine of Venezuela under President
Nicolás Maduro, according to the
U.N. refugee agency. Nearly 1.5 mil-
lion have ended up in Colombia.
Officials here say Duque’s decree
will protect a generation of chil-
dren.
“The Colombian government
has been firm in its commitment to
rise to the height of ethical respon-
sibility and offer help to the Venezu-
elans who feel forced to leave their
country,” Felipe Muñoz, appointed
by Duque to manage the Venezue-
lan border, wrote in response to
questions from The Washington
Post. “Let’s remember that decades
ago it was they who received us
Colombians in their country, when
the situation was inverse and it was
us fleeing difficult local conditions.”
Poverty and conflict have dis-
placed more people in the world
today than at any time in human
history. Some countries, including
the United States, have responded
by tightening borders and immi-
gration policies. Amal de Chickera,
co-director of the Institute on State-
lessness and Inclusion in London,
praised Colombia for taking the
opposite approach.
“In the current global climate, to
see Colombia actually going the
other way and taking a decision to
meet its obligations under interna-
tional law, it’s incredibly hearten-
ing,” he said.
Nine-month-old Rossani Tua is
now one of Colombia’s newest citi-
zens.
Her parents, Nixon, 35, and Ros-
sana, 33, traveled 10 hours by bus
from their home in the northwest-ern state of Lara, Venezuela, in late- Then they walked and hitch-
hiked to Bogota, the capital. They
slept in a park for a time, then found
shelter with a good Samaritan be-
fore eventually settling in a brick
shack in La Magdalena, a bustling
slum where people survive by col-
lecting, sorting, cleaning and recy-
cling the city’s garbage.
Rossana gave birth to Rossani in
November. If she’d had a Colombi-
an visa, the child would have been a
citizen at birth. But because she has
no nationality, Rossani’s parents
have been unable to obtain the doc-
umentation, such as a national ID
card or passport, that would entitle
her to public services or travel.
“We have her practically in lim-
bo,” said Rossana, holding the baby
in the door of their small home.
“She’s not Venezuelan or Colombi-
an. She doesn’t have a right to any-
thing. We don’t know what to do.”
Miriam Rivera is director of the
Karol Wojtyla Foundation, an or-
ganization in Bogota that provides
legal guidance to immigrants.
Not only will the decree benefit
the children, she said, but it also will
provide a path to citizenship for
immigrant parents, who under Co-
lombian law can earn nationality
through their children.
Colombian Foreign Minister
Carlos Holmes Trujillo said the
measure will be reviewed in two
years and could be prolonged.
Trujillo blamed the problem on
“insuperable obstacles” created by
the Venezuelan consular service to
register the children for Venezue-
lan citizenship.
“Those children have a right to
Venezuelan nationality,” he said.
“But it’s been practically impossi-
ble.”
It’s the latest effort by the govern-
ment here to accommodate the
Venezuelan influx. The country has
loosened ID requirements for Vene-
zuelans to enter, offered special res-
idence and work permits to mi-
grants, and opened public schools
to their children.
The special relationship be-
tween the two countries goes back
two centuries, leaders here often
recount, when Simón Bolívar led a
ragtag army from Venezuela to lib-
erate Bogota from Spanish rule. For
a time, they were both part of a
single nation — Greater Colombia
— that also included present-day
Ecuador, Panama and parts of Bra-
zil, Guyana and Peru.
More recently, tensions between
a succession of center-right govern-
ments in Bogota and the socialist
governments of Maduro and Hugo
Chávez have been strained. But
Duque still speaks of “our Venezue-
lan brothers and sisters” when ad-
dressing migration.
Colombia’s policies on Venezue-
lan migrants have increasingly set
it apart. Peru, with nearly 800,Venezuelans, and Chile and Ecua-
dor, with nearly 300,000 each, have
tightened restrictions on Venezue-
lans crossing their borders — al-
though all grant birthright citizen-
ship.
Humanitarian groups have ap-
plauded Colombia’s approach.
Marianne Menjivar, Colombia
director for the International Res-
cue Committee, called the citizen-
ship decree “a testament to Colom-
bia’s pro-refugee stance, one which
is increasingly under threat in the
region and which deserves interna-
tional support.”
She said other South American
countries should prioritize registra-
tion and legal status for Venezuelan
refugees, followed by programs for
social and economic integration.
The Organization of American
States last month predicted that the
Venezuelan exodus would surpass
the 6.7 million people who fled the
Syrian civil war by 2020 to become
the world’s largest.
The organization said interna-
tional funding for the Venezuelan
crisis amounts to about $100 per
person displaced. For the Syrians,
the figure peaked at $5,000.
That has left Colombia mostly on
its own to foot the bill for the hu-
manitarian crisis spilling over its
border.
Duque called on other nations to
offer more support.
“This requires that the worlddoes not remain indifferent,” he
said.
Children have proved costly,
drawing state funding for birth ser-
vices and space in public schools.
Thousands of Venezuelan mothers
have migrated to Colombia specifi-
cally to give birth.
For Osmari Cemplin, 18, deliver-
ing in her Venezuelan hometown of
Maracaibo would have meant buy-
ing medical supplies she couldn’t
afford, so her family pooled their
money to help her move in with a
cousin in Bogota, where she gave
birth last year.
Her son, Yonaiker, has no citizen-
ship. When he was 2 months old, he
came down with a fever, and some
months later, his face and eyes
swelled up. But undocumented im-
migrants are eligible to receive only
emergency treatment free, and the
family couldn’t afford anything
more.
“They said I’d have to bring her
in almost dead to tend to her,” she
said. “We all went home and cried.”
Maikely Rojas, 18, delivered Mat-
ias in Bogota two years ago. But she
and her husband struggle to feed
themselves, and their son wears
clothing for a 6-month-old.
Rojas said that she has asked for
nutritional assistance and pediat-
ric care from state hospitals, but her
son doesn’t qualify.
As a Colombian citizen, he will.
[email protected]In Colombia, 24,000 children born to Venezuelan migrants are now citizens
BY FELICIA SONMEZ,
KAREN DEYOUNG
AND ANTHONY FAIOLAPresident Trump issued an ex-
ecutive order late Monday placing
a full economic embargo on the
Venezuelan government of Presi-
dent Nicolás Maduro, and his ad-
ministration warned Russia and
China that if they continue to sup-
port him, they may never get back
their billions of dollars in loans
and investments in Venezuela.
The embargo, which follows
months of escalating sanctions on
government individuals and enti-
ties, blocks all property and assets
of the government and its officials,
and prohibits any transactions
with them, including the Venezue-
lan Central Bank and the state oil
company.
The action puts Venezuela on
par with Cuba, Iran, North Korea
and Syria, the only other countries
under a similar full embargo.
White House national security
adviser John Bolton is to give a
speech outlining the measure
Tuesday at a meeting of interna-
tional supporters of Juan Guaidó,
whom they recognize as Ven-
ezuela’s interim president. The
meeting is being held in Lima,
Peru.
In January, more than a dozen
countries in the hemisphere de-
clared his reelection illegal. With-
in days, those countries followed
the United States in recognizing
Guaidó, head of the opposition-
controlled National Assembly, as
Venezuela’s legitimate leader.Guaidó has struggled to gain
traction for the opposition against
strong repression by Maduro’s
still-loyal security forces.
The embargo comes at a time
when Venezuela is already collaps-
ing and when previous U.S. sanc-
tions have made a bad situation
worse. Oil production has fallen to
levels not seen since the 1940s,
due to long-term mismanagement
but also because of a ban on ship-
ments to the United States im-
posed this year that robbed Ven-
ezuela of its single largest source
of hard currency.
More than 4 million people
have fled, most of them into neigh-
boring South American countries.
In addition to severe shortages of
food and medicine, the United Na-
tions reported last month thatthousands of Venezuelans have
been victims of “torture and ill-
treatment, sexual violence, and
killings and enforced disappear-
ance.”
In a letter to House Speaker
Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) Monday
night, Trump said the freezing of
assets was necessary “in light of
the continued usurpation of pow-
er by the illegitimate Nicolas Ma-
duro regime, as well as the re-
gime’s human rights abuses, arbi-
trary arrest and detention of Ven-
ezuelan citizens, curtailment of
free press, and ongoing attempts
to undermine” Guaidó.
Trump hinted at the move last
week, telling reporters who asked
whether he was considering a
“blockade” against Venezuela:
“Yes, I am.” News of the executiveorder was first reported by the
Wall Street Journal.
Venezuela’s security services
are supported by Cuba. China has
extended massive loans to Ma-
duro, as has Russia, which has
extended credit in exchange for
ownership of Venezuelan energy
assets including oil and natural
gas fields.
Bolton, speaking to reporters
Monday in Lima, warned China
and Russia that continuing sup-
port “could affect repayment of
their debt after Maduro falls.”
“I think that the intention of the
order is to give the U.S. govern-
ment the ability to apply the law
beyond our shores, specifically to
China, Russia, Turkey and Cuba,
by allowing seizure of the assets of
any foreign bank or company thatdoes business with the Venezuela
regime,” said Russ Dallen, Florida-
based managing partner of bro-
kerage Caracas Capital Markets.
The near-bankrupt govern-
ment has sold off gold — much of it
to Turkey — and other assets in an
effort to remain afloat but has
nowhere near the resources re-
quired to confront serious struc-
tural problems.
Since a failed attempt to oust
Maduro in April, the opposition
has sought to regroup. Several
rounds of dialogue with the gov-
ernment have taken place, with
Maduro’s opponents demanding
presidential elections and condi-
tions for a free and fair vote.
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]Faiola reported from Miami. Rachelle
Krygier in Caracas contributed to this
report.Trump orders full economic embargo on Maduro government
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