Most foreigners in Peru have irregular immigration status

More than half of Peru’s 1.5 million foreigners, most of them from Venezuela, are in the country with irregular immigration status, according to data released Wednesday (3) by Peru’s interior minister.

Based on data available through mid-April, Interior Minister Vicente Romero said that about 60% of foreigners living in Peru had entered or stayed in the country without proper documentation, affecting “public security, public services, and employment.”

The minister’s remarks, made during a presentation to Congress, come at a time when the government of President Dina Boluarte has doubled border surveillance and deployed the armed forces to beef up security as hundreds of mostly Venezuelan migrants have been stranded on Peru’s border with Chile.

The migrants have said they want to travel north to return to their home country, which has experienced severe economic turmoil in recent years.

The Peruvian government is working with officials from Chile, Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela to explore the creation of a “humanitarian corridor” to allow the migrants to travel back to Venezuela.

About 150 Venezuelans will return to their country this weekend on a flight from the Chilean city of Arica, which borders Peru, Peruvian Foreign Minister Ana Cecilia Gervasi told Congress.

The majority of undocumented foreigners living in Peru entered the country after the government began granting temporary residency permits to Venezuelan migrants in 2017, Romero said, adding that many migrants’ temporary residency permits have since expired.

To combat the problem, the Peruvian government has set a deadline for foreigners to regularize their immigration status.