The acting president of Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez, has urged Venezuelans residing outside the national territory to return and has stressed that "it is time for them to return to their homeland" so that they can be "recognized".
Rodríguez has indicated that those who left Venezuela have been "severely hit by xenophobia" and "deprived of their essential Human Rights", which is why she has reiterated her call for their return. "It is time for them to return. The country needs them," she stated.
After indicating that Venezuelan migrants have suffered aggressions and difficulties in the workplace, she has offered institutional support and recalled that Venezuela has been for decades a "receiving nation that has welcomed communities from different countries".
"We have been a country that knows how to live with migrants and our migrants who crossed borders did not find a people like the Venezuelan people. They found peoples who rejected them, who exploited them. That is why we tell migrants: it is time for them to return," she stated, according to the television channel Globovisión.
The country has maintained the Vuelta a la Patria plan for years, through which thousands of citizens have returned, many of them after being deported from the United States to third countries.
According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), nearly 7.9 million people have left Venezuela in search of protection and better living conditions, of whom around 6.7 million have been received by other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.