Many Venezuelans trying to renew their passports abroad face a catch-22: They can’t return home without a current passport. But, in order to receive a new passport, they must return home.
Nicolás Maduro withdrew Venezuela’s diplomatic staff from several Latin American countries after they questioned the results of a disputed election earlier this year, shutting down consulates in Ecuador, Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Panama, Peru, the Dominican Republic and Uruguay. That means migrants who applied for new passports in those countries ahead of July’s vote will have to return home to retrieve them.
But a new rule that took effect September 25 prevents Venezuelans from re-entering the country with an expired passport unless they hold another nationality. Even if they have legal status in another country, they must get a US$60 permit in the nearest working consulate if they wish to travel home. And they won’t be permitted to leave again without a valid Venezuelan passport, which they may not be able to obtain during their visit.
It’s a regulatory paradox that has many migrants stuck in no man’s land. There are almost three million Venezuelans living in the countries that severed diplomatic ties after the election, according to estimates by United Nations agencies and partners. Most Venezuelan migrants in the region are believed to be undocumented in their host countries, leaving them effectively stateless.
Reny Peña, a 40-year-old industrial engineer who’s lived with his family in Argentina since 2017, is one of the people trapped in this administrative limbo. His passport, and those of his family members, expired in 2019. But at US$216 each, plus a US$120 fee for adults abroad charged at the consulate, it was impossible for the family to renew them until last year, when they decided to do it by turns. Peña’s wife went first and received her new document.
Peña and his elder daughter followed in May. The week before the July 28 vote, he missed unofficial information saying that a group of passports had arrived in the Venezuelan consulate. When he learned the news, it was already Friday and the embassy was closed to prepare for the election. It never reopened.
Today, Peña doesn’t know where his passport is.
“It is unfair, it is frustrating, it is painful, everything that is happening outside the country with Venezuelans hurts,” said Peña, who wishes to visit his parents and other relatives who still live in Venezuela. “We were left unassisted in all aspects.”
The large majority of Venezuelans abroad — 91 percent— have a passport, but more than half of those have expired, according to the Venezuelan Diaspora Observatory’s most recent survey, presented in early May. It found that only 19 percent of Venezuelan migrants could visit their homeland during 2023, while economic reasons or problems with documentation prevented others from doing so.
Peña and his daughter are among at least 2,700 Venezuelans living in Argentina who were waiting for documents when the consulate shut down, according to a recent online census conducted by the Federation of Venezuelans’ Civil Society Organisations, known as Focva.
“The Venezuelan government has maintained systematic disdain and contempt for the diaspora,” said professor and sociologist Tomás Páez Bravo, who coordinates the Venezuelan Diaspora Observatory. “It is a way of punishing those who are the human testimony of the failure of Venezuela’s socialist model.”
Growing isolation
The passport move adds to a series of government decisions that have pushed the country further into isolation after the presidential election, which Maduro says he won. But detailed electoral evidence gathered by the country’s opposition cast significant doubt on his claim, sparking a wave of international condemnation.
Maduro has suspended flight connections to a handful of countries, making air travel in and out of Venezuela more complicated and expensive. Direct routes to popular destinations like Panama and the Dominican Republic, mostly used to connect with the US and other nations, were halted a couple of days after the election. Then followed Peru and, most recently, Chile.
The situation has sent ticket prices through the roof. Airfares between Venezuela and neighboring Colombia, one of the few destinations through which passengers can still connect with the rest of the region, more than doubled in the aftermath. Today, a round trip between Caracas and Bogota can cost up to US$2,300. When flights between both countries resumed in late 2023, it was US$300.
“Isolation is normal when countries with the same dynamics as Venezuela are trying to consolidate themselves as hegemonic regimes,” said Benigno Alarcón, director of the political studies center at Andrés Bello Catholic University in Caracas. “The government tries to evade the pressure from outside.”
Carriers like Latam Airlines Group SA are warning Venezuelan passengers about the new travel restrictions but there’s still a lot of confusion around the requirements. Venezuela’s private tourism association, Conseturismo, issued a statement in early October following a meeting with authorities that said undocumented Venezuelans will be able to apply for travel permits online beginning October 14.
The lack of consular services is a familiar problem for those living in other countries like the US and Canada, which cut ties with Venezuela in 2019. Relations appeared to be improving, with the US suspending some sanctions in 2023, but that was scuttled by the election. Without diplomatic representation, migrants are also unable to access other legal documents, such as visas for foreign spouses, travel authorization for children and trade certificates, as well as death, birth and marriage certificates.
Alberto, who requested that his last name be withheld to protect family in Venezuela, moved to Miami with his wife and two children in 2017 after he faced threats from officials at the hospital where he worked as a gastroenterologist.
The family’s passports expired a year after arriving in Florida and they haven’t returned to Venezuela since. He hasn’t been able to visit his mother and missed his sister’s funeral after she died in 2021 from a pancreatic condition.
“The Venezuelan government has denied us as Venezuelans the universal human right to a proper identification. This is just abject meanness,” Alberto said. “I feel like Tom Hanks in that film about a person inside an airport, without the possibility to get out.”
) Venezuela election fallout traps migrants in passport limbo
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