LIMA (Reuters) – More than half of the 1.5 million foreigners in Peru, mostly from Venezuela, are in the country under an irregular immigration status, Peru’s interior minister said Wednesday.
Using data through mid-April, Interior Minister Vicente Romero said some 60% of foreigners living in Peru had entered or stayed in the country without the proper documents, which has had an impact on “public security, public services and employment,” he said.
The minister’s words, given as part of a presentation in Congress, come as President Dina Boluarte’s administration has doubled down on surveillance along the borders, sending in the armed forces to shore up security as hundreds of mostly Venezuelan migrants remain stranded on Peru’s border with Chile.
The migrants have said they are looking to travel north to return to their home country, which has undergone severe economic turmoil in recent years.
The Peruvian government has said it is working with representatives from Chile, Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela to evaluate the creation of a “humanitarian corridor” to allow the migrants to travel back to Venezuela.
Around 150 Venezuelans will go back to their country on a flight from the Chilean city of Arica, which borders Peru, this weekend, Peruvian Foreign Minister Ana Cecilia Gervasi also told Congress.
Most of Peru’s undocumented population arrived in the country after the government began granting Venezuelan migrants temporary residency in 2017, Romero said, with many migrants’ temporary residency since expiring.
To combat the issue, Peru’s government has set a deadline to allow foreigners to regularize their immigration status.
(Reporting by Marco Aquino; Writing by Kylie Madry; Editing by Christian Schmollinger)
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