BUENOS AIRES.- Venezuelans rose to the podium of the immigration trend in Argentina, where they are currently the third largest community behind Paraguayans and Bolivians with almost 8.4% of the 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 immigrants, followed by 338,299 Bolivians (17.5%) and then by 161,495 Venezuelans.
According to the details of the 2022 population census, Argentina has about 1.93 million foreign residents, which constitute 4.2% of its total population, the lowest rate since records began in 1869.
Venezuelans: “fleeing the crisis”
“In Venezuela I worked and I couldn’t afford anything. Here at least I have enough to feed my two children, ages 6 and 11, and for a home,” Patricia Rondón, 30, an employee, told AFP. from a traditional Venezuelan food business in Buenos Aires, where she previously worked as a street vendor, cashier, and childminder.
Rondón is part of the 7.7 million – 25% of the population according to the UN – who, since 2014, left Venezuela, a country rich in oil but immersed in a severe political, economic and social crisis for years. In a decade, its GDP contracted 80%.
In a second tier of Latin American immigrants in Argentina, there are Peruvians (156,251 people), Chileans (149,082) and Uruguayans (95,384).
More than a century ago, in 1914, Argentina had 29.9% of its population foreign, due to the wave of migration that arrived mainly from European countries.
“The declining trend in the participation of the non-native population with respect to the total population residing in private homes is confirmed, a constant characteristic of the third millennium,” Indec stated.
At the same time, although the inhabitants arriving from non-neighboring countries (24.5%) doubled in a decade, European immigrants fell by half (8.3% of the total).
As an immigrant, Rondón described the same problems of homelessness that exist in Buenos Aires, where the rental supply was reduced to a minimum and at very high historical prices.
“You can’t rent if you have children, most landlords don’t accept children, and not just Venezuelans,” said the woman, who lives with a family in a one-bedroom apartment with four children.
Source: AFP
