Venezuelan refugees in Colombia

Bloomberg Businessweek has a report on immigration, How Governments Use Immigration to Boost Their Economies 10/30/2019, that includes a section on refugees from Venezuela to Colombia:

Colombia, which shares a 1,400-mile border with Venezuela, has been hit hardest by the refugee crisis, receiving 1.6 million Venezuelan migrants, who now make up about 3% of the population, up from virtually none five years ago.

The Colombian government estimates it’s paid $1.5 billion - a figure equal to 0.5% of gross domestic product - to care for the exiles. A refugee fund set up by the World Bank, the United Nations, and the Islamic Development Bank approved a $31.5 million grant for Colombia in April. Meanwhile, international donors have pledged $340 million in humanitarian aid to help Venezuelan migrants in Colombia and elsewhere. However, those figures pale next to the more than $23 billion that countries and multilateral organizations committed to help Syrians fleeing their war-torn country in the first five years of the exodus, according to UN data. [my emphasis]

A significant number of refugees from Venezuela to Colombia are Colombians who had gone to live in Venezuela in more prosperous times when oil prices were high and boosting Venezuela's petrostate economy. But they are nevertheless part of a large influx of people who hadn't been living in Venezuela.

The Trump Administration is willing to impose sanctions to hammer the Venezuelan economy and undermine the current government of Nicolás Maduro, which it currently doesn't even recognize as the official government, although the "government" it does recognize there is largely a PR stunt.

But providing adequate assistance to Colombia to deal with the refugee problem to which the US has significantly contributed doesn't seem to be on the political radar screen of either party in the US.

But then, the Trump policy toward refugees in the US is appalling in so many ways, even criminally brutal.

It's also an important and valid criticism of the Obama Administration as well as Trump's that they were willing to take only a limited number of Syrian refugees from the Syrian civil war and also African refugees, many of which are now trying to make their way on the dangerousl refugee track to Europe after the destruction of the Libyan government by the US-French-British military intervention in 2011.

And thanks to the EU' own unwillingness to develop a realistic common policy for ansorbing refugees, refugee issues are now a growing contrast on EU and NATO foreign policy. Turkey currently is holding over three and a half million Syrian refugees and Turkey's willingness to hold them in exchange for payment from the EU was the kick-the-can-down-the-road "solution" to the immigration crisis of 2015-6 that Angela Merkel negotiated. The Syrian refugees are one motive for Turkey's current miltitary incursion into Syria.

The US and the EU have to get better of refugee problems more generally. And they need to take the lead in strangtening and expanding the United Nations' role, as well.

On the other hand, raising the need for (vaguely defined) longterm solutions to immigrantion/refugee issues is also used by xenophobic politicians as a deflection from discusinng more immediate problems. And if you can't be realistic and practical about the current problems, you're unlikely to be serious or realistic about longterm ones.