547,000 Colombians emigrated from the country last year, breaking historical records from the end of the 20th century and the beginning of this one when the financial crisis and violence dragged thousands of people to leave Colombia, according to figures from the Conflict Analysis Resource Center (Cerac).
The levels of migration of Colombians abroad registered a rate of 11 nationals per 1,000 inhabitants in 2022, surpassing even the numbers of the financial crisis at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the current one.
“Unlike what was happening during the 1998-2002 government period, when the previous increase in emigration occurred, in 2022, the Colombian economy experienced a historical boom period, with a growth rate of 7.5%, the second highest in recent history and with downward levels in terms of human insecurity,” it explains.
In 1999 Colombia faced one of its worst economic crises in modern times due to a reversal in external capital flows and GDP contracted by 4.2%.
In 1999 some 225,000 Colombians left the country, while in 2000 and 2001, a peak of 282,000 each year was reached.
Cerac explains that the current migratory wave began in March 2021 and “coincided then with a greater availability of vaccines against covid-19 and lower levels of contagion of the disease in the population”.
The increase in emigration of Colombians between 2021 and 2022 was 95%.
And the result obtained in 2022 “was 2.7 times the average number of nationals emigrating each year since 2012 (just under 200,000 Colombians per year).”
WHO ARE THE COLOMBIANS MIGRATING OUT OF THE COUNTRY?
Colombians from the middle and upper classes would concentrate the majority of people who have decided to leave the country, Cerac explains.
And also Colombians who “have decided to take a significant economic risk to make a payment that costs a lot,” Cerac director Jorge Restrepo told Bloomberg Línea.
“For sure, the people in these registries, which are quite conservative, are not poor. Poor people usually migrate through irregular channels and are not in the official registries. They are more in the arrival registers of the countries,” he said.
According to Cerac’s analysis, the main countries to which Colombians migrate are the United States, Chile, and Mexico.
The report shows that the largest proportion of the Colombian migrant population is young people.
In fact, 35% of national migrants are between 18 and 29, 23% are over 30 and under 40, and 19% are underage.
“There is no significant difference between Colombian women and men who migrated in 2022″, the document adds.
WHY ARE THEY LEAVING THE COUNTRY?
Cerac director Jorge Restrepo said the main reason for the migration spike might be the Colombian peso‘s (COP) persistent depreciation.
“Even in the short term, many people in Colombia go and do periods of work in Europe or the US and return to the country,” he said.
Regarding the results, Restrepo also analyzes that it may respond to the lack of expectations of young people, social mobility challenges, lower profitability of higher education in Colombia, and difficulty in materializing medium and high-income employment opportunities.
He said another reason is “the fact that many people during the pandemic postponed their travel.”
“I don’t think that explains most of the flow, as well as the first, but it is the only other reason that one can certainly mention. The rest are more speculative reasons, and we must wait to see what happens in the future if these flows are sustained to be certain about that,” said the Cerac director.
Cerac explains that in January of this year, the number of Colombian national migrants also increased compared to December and January 2022.
In fact, last month, there was an increase of 2.3 times the number of migrants compared to January 2022.
For Restrepo this result is notorious because “always in January more people enter than leave” due to the December vacations.
“And it is likely that with a marked slowdown in the economy, which we are already seeing, this trend will at least continue.”
The report concludes that “the substantial increase in the emigration of young Colombians represents a huge loss of human capital and productive potential for the country.”
“Although in demographic terms, the recent migration of Venezuelan nationals and Venezuelans with dual nationality largely offsets this effect, the difference between the level of education, experience, and capital between one and the other migrant population points to a large net loss, in the short term, for Colombia”.
With information from Bloomberg