The National Migration Service assured that there is a historical lag and that there are applications up to six years late.
This was admitted by the entity’s director, Luis Eduardo Thayer, who assured that the scenario “is very complex. When we took office, in April of last year, there were 500,000 pending applications from the past. Of those, a little more than 200,000 were of temporary visas. The rest, some 300,000, a little more, were for permanent stay. So, we have a bottleneck that is historic in the service.”
For this, Thayer declared that a special program is being implemented for 2023 that implies an investment of almost one billion pesos. He also added that the resources will be used mainly “to increase the capacities of people and analysts, and at the same time we are developing a new technology, which is the National Registry of Foreigners, which will allow us to simplify the analysis and application entry platforms.” “.
Likewise, from the agency they assure that the reasons for the delay would be the extraordinary regularization processes of the years 2018 and 2021 that were carried out due to the increase in the migrant flow. It is for this reason that the number of people seeking temporary residences increased, which triggered massive applications.
The one who also referred to this was Valezka Ureta, national director of the Jesuit Service for Migrants, who pointed out that “we understand that there is a historical waiting list and we value the announcement of mechanisms to speed up the processes.”
However, he warned that they have already “foolishly” insisted on the need to improve the regularization processes “because we are convinced that it is the great step to order the current migratory flow. In addition, we continue to be emphatic in pointing out that a national migration policy is needed, an announcement that the Government has not yet complied with. And also that the service has the resources to be installed accordingly,” said Ureta.
