The president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, sworn in six new cabinet officials this Wednesday, including the new director of Colombia Migration, Carlos Fernando García Manosalva, who has held positions related to international affairs.
Migración Colombia published through its Twitter account @MigracionCol: “Today, in a ceremony held at the Casa de Nariño, President @petrogustavo appointed political scientist Fernando García Manosalva as the new General Director of @migracioncol. García Manosalva has a postgraduate degree in Culture of Peace from @UABBarcelona”.
According to Petro, as a first task, García will have to coordinate the process to “lift the orders prohibiting entry into the country,” reported the website of Time.
During the act of inauguration, the President assured that the previous government had ordered restrictions on entry into Colombian territory due to “political sectarianism”, but in his opinion, all of them should be lifted “because this is a country of freedom.”
«(…) This type of dictatorial attitude should not be established as a policy, neither of the Foreign Ministry, nor Migration. Undoubtedly, the fundamental issue here is the Venezuelan population in all the complexity that this means, living freely in Colombia,” Petro said.
ETPV
The Colombian president also referred to the Temporary Protection Statute for Venezuelan Migrants (ETPV), which he said “allows you to stay” in the country, but “does not allow access to rights in Colombia«.
Therefore, he affirmed that with the resources that the Government has received in recent years, it will seek to improve the conditions of the migrants Venezuelans who are in Colombian territory.
“It is necessary to achieve the full integration of the people who come from Venezuela if they want to stay freely in Colombia (…) There are those who here raise xenophobic flags, believing that the foreigner is bad per se, when in reality the person who comes from outside adds to the workforce,” he added.
Along these lines, Petro pointed out that the invitation for the Venezuelan migrant population is to integrate productively, for which he stressed as necessary that there be a “rapid homologation” of the academic titles they have so that they can access the labor system, without impediments ” that it is not competition with Colombianity, even, it should be of association ».
Garcia Manosalva
García Manosalva has served as deputy director of international affairs for the Mayor’s Office of Bogotá and has experience in management and administration of migration projects.
He was also “part of the projects of the Immigration Service, Social Management Administration in Sweden,” detailed a tweet from @MigracionCol.
According to Colombian media, García Manosalva was trained as an expert in political science at the Universidad de Los Andes and has a specialization in culture of peace from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (Spain).
The new director of Migration Colombia also formed the Program for the Development of the United Nations Organization (UN) and additionally worked for the Foundation for the Programming of Science and Technology.
Other appointments
José Reyes Rodríguez, as the new director of the Special Administrative Unit of the Military and Police Criminal Justice; as well as Pablo Francisco Pardo, appointed director of the Dapre Special Program for Peace (FundPaz).
In the same way, in the list to be sworn in were: Stalin Antonio Ballesteros as general director of the National Contracting Agency, Colombia Compra Eficiente; Sneider Alfonso Manzur Arrieta, as superintendent of surveillance and private security; Dagoberto Quiroga Collazos as superintendent of Home Public Services, and Mauricio García, who took over as liquidator of the Truth Commission, published Time.
