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Critical analysis of the regularization of the Venezuelan community in Ecuador

Crea Tu Espacio

2 hours ago

2 min read

Venezuelan and immigrant community processing their visas in Ecuador.

Ecuador has positioned itself as one of the leading countries in the protection of people in situations of human mobility. Its 2008 Constitution enshrines the principles of universal citizenship and non-refoulement and incorporates the expanded refugee definition established by the Cartagena Declaration, and the country has been recognized as a Champion Country of the Global Compact for Migration. The experience of the more than 440,000 Venezuelans residing in Ecuador, however, reveals a persistent gap between what the State establishes in its legal framework and what it guarantees in practice.

This analysis documents how the regional and bilateral pathways that historically offered the Venezuelan community routes to regularization have been progressively dismantled. Venezuela's exit from the Andean Community (CAN), its suspension from MERCOSUR, and Ecuador's withdrawal from UNASUR, together with the termination of the bilateral Migration Statute in 2025, left specialized visas as the only feasible route to regularization for a significant portion of the Venezuelan community.

Against this backdrop, international protection under the figures of asylum and refuge has become one of the few legal alternatives that remain. Yet between 2018 and 2022, only 1,100 of 27,889 Venezuelan applicants were granted refugee status, evidencing the systematic underapplication of a standard Ecuador itself has incorporated into its domestic law. The 2025 reforms to the Organic Law on Human Mobility (LOMH) deepen this gap further, expanding the grounds for inadmissibility, deportation, and revocation in ways that depart from the standards set by the Constitutional Court and that undermine due process and the principle of non-refoulement.

The exceptional pathways created to regularize this population (VERHU, VIRTE I, and VIRTE II) did not close the gap: they regularized migratory status without conferring international protection. Their temporary nature, compounded by the inaccessibility of the required documentation, rendered them unsustainable, particularly for priority-attention groups.

COMPLETE DOCUMENT

The analysis concludes that the regularization of the Venezuelan community in Ecuador has not failed for want of progressive legal norms, but because of the distance between the law and its implementation. To honor its commitments, Ecuador should establish a stable, long-term pathway to regularization, decoupled from the state of its diplomatic relations with Venezuela; make documentary requirements more flexible; recognize the refugee status of those who meet the elements of the expanded Cartagena definition; and guarantee due process, with particular attention to the priority-attention groups recognized in the Constitution.