The representation of Juan Guaidó in Colombia has certified 22,000 university documents of Venezuelan migrants in the Andean country thanks to a service launched through an agreement between the team of the interim president and the government of Iván Duque, the Venezuelan opposition Eduardo Battistini reported Tuesday.
“To date we have managed to certify 22,000 university documents (…) let’s round up to the fact that an apostille today, irregularly, can be obtained for 100 dollars in Venezuela. We are saying that with this mechanism we have snatched $2,200,000 from the corruption mafias of the Nicolás Maduro regime,” Battistini said in a statement released by the opposition.
The plan was launched in November, when the opposition reported that, given the difficulty in Colombia to apostille university degrees, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Border Management of the Andean country, in coordination with the Venezuelan opposition, adopted “a temporary, transitory, expeditious, exceptional and alternative mechanism” for validation.
Thus, the first title accredited by this service was delivered on December 10.
They thank Colombia for the support
Battistini explained that it is a “successful” program with which they have managed to support vmigrant enezolanos and also to more than 1,200 Colombians returned from Venezuela.
He reported that the mechanism will be open until July 31 and that they seek to “certify” as many higher education documents as possible.
In this sense, the opposition representative of Guaidó in Colombia thanked the Foreign Ministry of that nation for the support in the regularization of Venezuelan citizens in the Andean country.
For his part, the Colombian Border Manager, Lucas Gómez, highlighted the importance of this process with which they seek the inclusion of migrants in the formal labor field.
«A migrant who certifies and homologates his title, is a migrant who wants to enter the formal market, that is, he will enter our contributory regime, who will pay for health, pension and who will pay taxes in our country. That is the productivity that we want,” Gómez said, according to the opposition press release.
Gómez stressed that the 22,000 certified university documents entered a procedure to be finally approved, but that this process facilitates the work for Colombian institutions.
As previously reported by the opposition, the procedure must be carried out before Guaidó’s representative office in Colombia with a “consular certification on validity, legitimacy and authenticity” of the documents issued by legally recognized higher education institutions in Venezuela.