Photo: EFE
Venezuelans have risen to the podium of the migratory flow in Argentina, where they currently They are the third largest community behind Paraguayans and Bolivians with almost 8.4% out of 46.65 million inhabitants, according to the Institute of Statistics (Indec).
A total of 522,598 million Paraguayans, the largest foreign community in the country, represent 27% of the total migrants, followed by 338,299 Bolivians (17.5%) and then by 161,495 Venezuelans.
According to details of the 2022 population census, Argentina has approximately 1.93 million foreign residents, making up 4.2% of its total population, the lowest rate since records began in 1869.
«In Venezuela I was working and couldn’t afford anything. Here at least I have enough to feed my two children.6 and 11 years old, and for a house,” Patricia Rondón, 30, an employee of a traditional Venezuelan food company in Buenos Aires, told AFP. She previously worked as a street vendor, cashier and childcare worker.
Homeless
Rondón is part of the 7.7 million – 25% of the population according to the UN – who, since 2014, have left Venezuela, a country rich in oil but immersed for years in a serious political, economic and social crisis. In a decade, its GDP shrank by 80%.
In a second group of Latin American migrants in Argentina there are Peruvians (156,251 people), Chileans (149,082) and Uruguayans (95,384).
More than a century ago, in 1914, Argentina once had 29.9% of its population made up of foreignersdue to the wave of migration that arrived mainly from European countries.
“The trend towards a decline in the participation of the non-native population compared to the total population residing in private homes, a constant characteristic of the third millennium, is confirmed”, stated the Indec.
At the same time, although the number of inhabitants arriving from non-neighbouring countries (24.5%) has doubled in a decade, European migrants have halved (8.3% of the total).
As a migrant, Rondón described the same problems of lack of housing that exist in Buenos Aires, where the supply of rentals was reduced to a minimum and at very high historical prices.
«You can’t rent if you have children, most owners do not accept children“, and not just to Venezuelans,” said the woman, who lives with a family in a studio apartment with four children.
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2024-01-17 00:50:14
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