Ana looks out the window of a house that doesn't belong to her, at the landscape of a country that doesn't belong to her. Her three-year-old daughter is playing outside: “Grandma, I already made the soup for you,” she says. “She only knows her grandparents via video calls and pretends I’m her grandmother,” explains Ana. They haven't seen the family for five years.
Situations like Ana's are not uncommon for people forced to flee to Ecuador: obtaining regular status and reuniting with family are real challenges. According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), this country hosts almost 550,000 refugees and migrants, representing 3% of a population of about 18 million people. “From the moment you have regular status until you can bring your family, it can take years and it is difficult to get the money. People take advantage of this because there is a lot of misinformation about how the process works,” says Ana.
This large group includes Ana, Luis and Yulitza (fictitious names to protect their identities). Ana is Cuban. He came to Ecuador in 2018. After a long process, he managed to legalize himself and now works as a publicist. Luis is Venezuelan. He has been living in Ecuadorian territory for four years. After the immigration amnesty for Venezuelans who arrived irregularly was approved in June, regularization could begin. Yulitza is Colombian. She was granted refugee status two years after arriving, but found employment difficult and, like Luis, she engages in informal activities to support her family.
Their stories, countries of origin and reasons for emigrating are different. But the three are united by their desire to see their families again. Luis left behind a two-year-old son and his pregnant wife, and four years later he still hasn't met his daughter. Yulitza hasn't seen her mother for more than seven years and doesn't know her youngest grandchildren either.
Luis, the weight of irregularity
Luis is one of the nearly eight million Venezuelans who have left their country to build a new life. And although he believed that by leaving his homeland he would give his loved ones a better future, he encountered many obstacles along the way.
“From the moment I arrived in Ecuador I knew it wouldn't be easy. “Being away from my family and not sharing everyday life with my children…” It is also difficult not having a permanent job or working without a salary, as has already happened. “If they don’t pay me… what should I do? “Who can I complain to?” he asks.
Luis, a Venezuelan migrant in Ecuador, washes a coffee pot. Marianne P. Sosa
According to figures from the Working Group on Refugees and Migrants (GTRM) from September this year, more than 475,000 Venezuelan refugees and migrants live in Ecuador, the fourth country to host the largest number of Venezuelans after Colombia, Peru and Brazil.
Luis is the sole breadwinner for his family in Venezuela. He has to divide his salary between his expenses in Quito, where he rents a room, and remittances. He received food aid during his first six months in Ecuador. He also received help during the Covid-19 pandemic, the most difficult time of his entire stay.
“I didn't bring my wife and kids because I don't want them to go through what I went through to get here. I came on foot with another group of Venezuelans,” he recalls. “I wish they could get a visa; But most of all I want to be able to have a stable income to create conditions before providing them. Even with a visa, it is not easy to find a permanent job. Imagine you are in an irregular situation.”
In June 2022, as part of an extraordinary regularization process, Ecuador approved a decree allowing Venezuelan citizens and their family members access to a temporary residence visa. A year later, with the approval of the amnesty, people who, like Luis, had not regularly entered the country were able to access this regularization process. It is a ray of hope in Luis' desire to see his daughter again and to hug his son and his wife once more.
Yulitza, an uncertain future
Although a long time has passed since Colombia-born Yulitza arrived in Ecuador, she still remembers “as if it were yesterday” the events that brought her here, a violent situation that she prefers not to describe.
Violence has left deep marks on the lives of Colombians. According to Colombia's Truth Commission report published last year, at least 450,664 homicides were recorded as a result of the internal armed conflict between 1985 and 2018, although the authors acknowledge that this number could rise to 800,000. In addition, 121,768 people were missing; 55,770 were kidnapped and around 7.7 million Colombians, like Yulitza, were victims of forced relocation.
The shared borders have made Ecuador the world's most important receiving country for Colombians. According to the UN refugee agency UNHCR, the country was hosting just over 75,000 refugees at the end of November 2023, one of the highest numbers in the region. 95% of these come from Colombia.
“The hardest thing for me was having to work alone with my small children. I had to go out with them to find a way to move forward,” says Yulitza, a mother of four. He has received financial and food aid from several NGOs, but believes it is not enough. “I'm grateful of course, but to be honest I needed someone to look after my young children and work on whatever it was. I'm alone and sometimes the older ones see the little ones so I can do something… clean a house or go sell,” says the woman, who had the help of her mother and two of her aunts in Colombia.
When asked why he has not yet been able to return to his mother and siblings, he replies: “We tried. My family had to leave the place where we lived and everyone went to a different place. It wasn’t easy to stay in touch either.”
Ana, a mother's longing
From mid-2008 to December 2015, Cubans found Ecuador's open-door and visa-free policies a way to leave Cuba and continue to the United States. But more than 2,000 Cubans found a second home in the Andean country, which gave them the possibility of a new beginning.
This is the case with Ana. But the Cuban community in Ecuador does not escape the obstacles to family reunification, a problem that is even more accentuated on their island of origin. “The damn fact that there is water everywhere,” says Ana, paraphrasing the playwright Virgilio Piñera. “That’s right, you either get a visa or you go to one of the few countries that are visa-free for Cubans and from there you take the risk and face all the obstacles that come with irregular entry to your destination,” he admits.
In Ecuador, Cubans like her have many problems reuniting with their families. “First you have to normalize yourself. If for some reason, as is the case in my case, you came here without documents, legalization is troublesome. I got it after three years,” explains the woman. “Then you have to meet a series of requirements to be able to protect someone, even if they are your minor child. Meeting all of these requirements is very complicated, especially the economic ones. Therefore, the problem is bureaucratic in nature. For example, from April 2022 to March 2023, the protection visa appointment application page at the Ecuadorian Consulate in Havana was closed. Almost a year without access to a simple procedure,” he emphasizes.
Refugees and migrants also face unemployment and job insecurity, a problem plaguing Ecuador. According to the National Institute of Statistics and Census, more than 60% of the workforce has salaries below the minimum wage. Under these circumstances, covering a family's basic expenses and saving for immigration proceedings becomes a real challenge.
Looking out the window, Ana thinks of her son in Cuba and how she wants to hug him. He hasn't seen him in five years. “Grandma, please come and eat the soup,” can be heard from the other side.
Marianne P. Sosa lives as a refugee in Ecuador. This report was published under an agreement between UNHCR Ecuador and Planeta Futuro.
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