Over the past year, newspapers have been filled with stories of families stranded across borders as a result of COVID-19 travel bans and new entry regulations. The phenomenon, however, adds to an older problem – migration regimes have long been keeping networks of kin apart, especially when people involved hold precarious migratory statuses. 

The right to family life is today enshrined in most international and regional conventions on human rights. Yet, in order to enjoy such prerogative, individuals must meet certain requirements that are highly discriminatory. From Europe to South America, national citizens can more easily join or re-join their foreign-born family members than temporary residents. In many countries, citizens’ reunited relatives also enjoy more benefits (such as the right to work) than temporary residents’ family members. That is not to mention undocumented migrants, for whom family reunification can only happen through irregular channels. The right to family life (or should we say privilege?) also works across clear class divides. Sponsorship regulations –which ask visa sponsors to prove that they have the means to cover their families’ expenses in the country of destination- tend to benefit those holding certain positions in the labour and housing markets, at the same time as they favour specific family configurations. 

Although much has been said about family migration and reunification in the European and North American continents, relatively less studies have focused on the case of South America. Interestingly, countries in the region are noteworthy for their progressive family reunification legislations.  Excluding the Guianas and Suriname, all countries in the continent extend the right to family reunification not only to spouses and minor children, but also to parents. In Brazil and Ecuador, the right is also given to children of any age, grandparents, grandchildren, and siblings. In Ecuador and Peru, parent in-laws may also benefit from family reunification. In addition, in countries such as Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil and Uruguay, the combination of jus solis (birth right to citizenship) with the principle that children should not be denied the right to family life opens up paths to regularization of entire families when children are involved – a pattern not common in other parts of the world. 

Nonetheless, mobility governance practices in the region still create a number of practical hindrances for kin who wish to come together. Particularly, the new humanitarian protection mechanisms implemented in countries such as Colombia, Chile, Peru, and Ecuador towards Venezuelan migrants generally determine that all members of the same family, if Venezuelan nationals, shall apply to the same entry and residence visas. Although entrance may be facilitated if the reason of migration is the reunification with someone already in the country of destination, there is no separate residence path through family reunification, as seen for other nationalities. Because many of these humanitarian protection visas work around stringent documentation requisites, the differential access that people in the same family may have to certain records, such as passports and criminal clearance certificates, could delay or even impede reunification. Such formal, apparently harmless requirements may turn into overwhelming difficulties to families who are fleeing from situations of complete institutional collapse.

Similarly, family reunification may be impacted by quick changes in entry regulations, such as border closures and travel bans imposed since the start of the pandemic. It is an error, however, to assume that such measures necessarily hinder family-linked migration altogether, especially in the case of bordering countries. In fact, migration scholars have long been stressing that restrictive policies tend to backfire. In the case of South America, the curtail of cross-border mobility has meant that migrants cannot bring in-kind remittances to their family members remaining in Venezuela. Because money transferences to Venezuela are severely restricted at the moment, this means that those staying behind often have no other option but to join their family members already living in other countries, generally through informal pathways. As had already been documented in places such as the United States, it seems that restrictive migration policies could actually be leading to a spur of irregular migration in the region, including of unaccompanied minors. 

Those who enter destination countries through such irregular routes, often called trochas, are denied access to formal rights and benefits. Colombia, for example, has recently implemented a new temporary permit that gives Venezuelans the right to reside and work in the country for up to ten years, the Statute of Temporary Protection (ETP). Yet, the concession of the new visa presupposes that the person should have entered Colombia through a regular border post, which is virtually impossible at the moment when all frontiers are closed. Across the region, the result is that the same group of nationals are being granted different rights in accordance with their time of arrival in countries of destination, more specifically, depending on whether they entered before or after the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic. These processes could lead to the emergence of mixed-status families, i.e., families whose members have different citizenship or immigration status. Although this is a well-known phenomenon in other regions of the world, it is still necessary to conduct further empirical studies analysing the extension of the problem in South America. Mixed status families are particularly prone to enforced separation through deportation, and this ever-looming possibility tends to be highly detrimental to the well-being of regular and irregular family members alike. 

In short, what has become clear is that, despite relatively liberal family reunification legislations, migrant families in the region are still severely impacted by the ways in which state bureaucracies control time and movement. In the case of Venezuelans, family members usually apply to temporary protection separately, as individuals, and what seems to be at stake here is that those who migrate at different points in time might be subject to different entry and residence regulations. In fact, the policies enshrined in new protection figures have been changing at an extraordinary pace, a pattern undoubtedly aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the rise of sanitary-related restrictions. Such erratic mode of governance that constantly alters the rules of the game without prior notice may have a number of interconnected consequences. Firstly, the prohibition of cross-border circulation could prompt those who were left behind to move in situations of irregularity. That, in turn, can lead to a rise in mixed-status families and increased risk of separation through deportation. Conversely, for those who cannot or are not willing to move through such precarious pathways, the waiting can be long and highly unpredictable. While expecting for visa processes to resume or for borders to reopen, separated kin may miss important life events and be prevented from providing approximate care at crucial times, such as childbirth or illness. Families that wish and need to be together are drawn, therefore, into a dilemma, where they must choose between two forms of uncertainty: irregularity or enforced waiting. 

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