Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yván Gil announced today that in the coming days repatriation flights will be coordinated for Venezuelan migrants living in Chile through the “Vuelta a la Patria” program so that they can return to Venezuela, amid tightening control immigration by the government of Gabriel Boric.
“Following instructions from President Nicolás Maduro, we announce that in the coming days we will be starting a series of repatriation flights, coordinated with the government of Chile, through the Vuelta a la Patria program,” Gil wrote on the social network .
The announcement was shared by the Chilean president with the message: “This is the result of the intense diplomatic work that we have carried out.”
Boric reported last week that they will be “inflexible” with foreigners with an arrest warrant and those who are in the country irregularly, and in both cases they will be expelled within a period of five days.
For her part, the Chilean Minister of the Interior and Security, Carolina Tohá, said today that she welcomed the Venezuelan Foreign Minister’s announcement.
“The Government of Chile will make the necessary coordination to carry out these flights as soon as possible,” said Tohá in X.
The Chilean Foreign Minister, Alberto van Klaveren, also appreciated the decision: “I thank Foreign Minister Yvan Gil for his permanent willingness to dialogue on issues of mutual interest,” he detailed on the same social network.
Last May, Klaveren had traveled to Caracas to attend the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and deliver an analysis of the migration crisis that was being experienced on the border of Chile and Peru, where hundreds of foreigners were stranded seeking to return to their countries.
At that time, 115 Venezuelans returned to their country on a flight financed by Venezuela.
Two weeks ago, a plane carrying 60 Venezuelan citizens with an expulsion order for being in an irregular immigration situation could not take off from Chile because Venezuela did not authorize landing on its territory.
The Chilean director of Migration, Luis Eduardo Thayer, later clarified that the rejection of the landing by Venezuela was not a political issue, but rather “technical aspects”, since “there was a lack of permission from the Venezuelan equivalent of the General Directorate of Civil Aeronautics (DGAC)”.
Thayer then stated that Venezuelan citizens would be flown back to Venezuela on commercial flights.
In 2018, 89 Venezuelans who were residing in Chile had already been repatriated.
This program seeks to follow the same line of travel that the Government was executing to establish an air and land bridge for the voluntary return of all those migrants and their families who lack their own means for return.
Source: Ambito
