Peru braces for Bolivian migration wave amid turmoil

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Peruvian and other Latin American authorities are keeping a wary eye on conditions in neighbouring Bolivia, where a potential economic collapse could unleash a new wave of regional migration.

“Now, possibly, we are worried about the migration that could come from Bolivia,” said Peruvian Finance Minister José Arista in an interview in Lima. “There is a lot of uncertainty about internal economic activity.”

Bolivia is almost out of foreign currency reserves, the currency is quickly devaluing, inflation is rapidly rising and widespread fuel shortages are impeding economic activity.

Arista later said he wasn’t greatly concerned about migration, but that the government should prioritise higher-skilled migrants.

In recent years, South America has been transformed by migration, mostly due to an exodus of seven million Venezuelans seeking economic opportunity and safety.

About 1.5 million of them have arrived in Peru in the past decade, fuelling widespread xenophobia, raising concerns about transnational crime and pushing the government to resist more migration and make it easier to deport people.

A wave of Bolivians arriving in Peru would fit within that tense backdrop. Arista said that migration in general can be good for the economy, but there is a limit at any given time about how much labor can be immediately absorbed, especially if workers are low-skilled.

On the previous wave of Venezuelan migrants, Arista said: “The bad part is that maybe those workers came in a moment when we didn’t have the capacity to absorb their productive activities.”

The government is optimistic about Peru’s economy. That means, in Arista’s view, that Bolivian migrants are likely to choose Peru as their destination, over other neighbours.

“I think that population will choose Peru,” he said. “Chile is growing at less than two percent, Argentina is in a process of stabilisation with negative growth, Peru is growing at three percent and our perspective for the next year, hopefully with a wave of optimism, is to grow at a faster rate.”