Colombia says the number of
Venezuelans fleeing a severe economic crisis to live in Colombia has
increased by 62% in the last six months.
The influx is putting pressure on the government especially in border areas to provide the migrants with food, shelter and medical care.
The number of Venezuelans travelling through Colombia has doubled.
Officials say a million Venezuelans have registered for a migration card that allows them to come and go across the border to buy food and other products scarce in their own country.
On an average day in 2017, more than 30,000 Venezuelans used the card to enter and leave Colombia across a border where smugglers thrive selling increasingly unavailable but heavily subsidised Venezuelan products to Colombians.
Of the Venezuelans living in Colombia, 126,000 have legal permission to stay including some 69,000 who have taken advantage of a humanitarian visa introduced in July 2017
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