Children like Samantha are now a core group eligible for the Colombia Temporary Protection Permit (PPT) due to the limited eligibility of adults in 2023.
Colombia established the PPT program in 2021, encouraging Venezuelans to seek legal immigration status.
It was welcomed as a breakthrough to deal with the immigration and refugee crisis. The permit will remain in effect until 2031, allowing Venezuelans to access Colombian education system, employment and other services.
Andre Moya, a professor at the Los Andean School of Economics University, studied the benefits of PPT.
He found that Venezuelans with normalized immigration situations had higher monthly incomes, improved health and higher consumer spending. And the Colombian government’s support is less expensive than documented immigrants and refugees.
Moya said the children are particularly obvious.
“If we invest in these kids, they will be in a better position later in life, helping to create jobs, jobs, their own businesses and increase consumption,” he said.
Otherwise, the family warned that “will continue to migrate across the community, increasing the crisis or burden the system.”
However, as USAID has stopped distributing foreign aid, there are scattered programs that handle special permits called the “Visibles” project.
Several Visilbull offices were reopened on February 28th with Skeleton staff. The Colombian government had to rehire employees with its own funds.
According to a spokesman for the Colombian Immigration Agency, there were originally 171 staff processing documents nationwide before aid was frozen. Now the government wants to maintain 92.
When the site was closed nationwide last month, Llano Medina said only one person was left on the Medellín staff (program coordinators) to handle high-level complaints.
She believed that she helped save the life of her 8-month-old child by helping her to connect with the coordinator. When a Venezuelan infant signed up for a high fever in late February, the coordinator was able to arrange an emergency PPT so that the baby could receive hospital care.
She was worried that other undocumented children would not be able to get the same help in emergencies.
From 2021 until funding freezes, Llano Medina estimated that it had registered at least 1,500 children for the PPT. She showed Al Jazeera three notebooks and two tablets, wrote information about each child, kept their photos and filled out the documents.
Now she’s having a hard time cutting down the bus fares together to go to the hospital for volunteer shifts.
“It’s a commitment I make with my heart. Honestly, not many people do it for free, so I like to contribute,” she said.
Llano Medina pointed out Samantha as one of the lucky ones. The 5-year-old’s fever eventually broke, and within a few days she felt well enough to go to school.
However, her mother, Roysa, is still worried about what will happen next when she faces a medical emergency. She plans to resume the PPT registration process for both Samantha and Clarion once local immigration offices are able to rehire staff.
“What gives us hope is knowing that once the process is opened, we can finally remove this burden,” she said. “They’re going to get health insurance…and we won’t turn our backs.”
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