BOGOTA, Colombia — A new program designed to help settle Venezuelans who fled to Colombia could serve as a “model for the world” in dealing with today’s unprecedented wave of immigration and forced displacement, U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said Tuesday.
But the program, paid in part by U.S. and European aid, may never get off the ground if Colombia’s new leftist President Gustavo Petro uses a just-announced rapprochement with Venezuela as reason to send immigrants and refugees home.
Blinken spent part of the second day of a weeklong trip through South America to focus on immigration with a stop at a state-run center that connects displaced Venezuelans with government services and offers access to loans, schooling, training and ways to obtain legal residential status.
