MS LOPEZ: It is a great pleasure to once again welcome to Bogotá Mr. Blinken, Secretary of State of the United States of America. It is a great pleasure to have you here.
SECRETARY BLINKEN: Thank you.
MS LOPEZ: Welcome to this integrated center for not Venezuelans, not migrants, for new Bogotans. That’s how they are, that’s how we feel them, that’s how we treat them. As you can see, this is a great joint effort between the Government of the United States, USAID in particular, with the National Government of Colombia and the Local Government of Bogotá, at the service of the people. We are only serving them with registration, TPS, identification, which of course was the first step to receive them legally, to allow them to be able to and guarantee that they can be here safely and that they are welcome.
But now we are at the next step. Bogotá has the honor of being the city in the Americas that has received the most migrants in recent years. It has been a challenge, yes, but it is also a blessing. And the next step is not just legal inclusion, but labor inclusion and social inclusion. We are very happy that 57,000 children of new Bogotans are now starting in kindergarten, in the schools of Bogota.
So we want to thank you and the Government of the United States, particularly USAID for their support, for the confidence in our common work, for having this type of integrated centers in Bogotá. Nine of them are already scheduled for this year, and also for your support and the Government of the United States for work and education and the inclusion of new Bogota citizens.
Welcome once again, Mr. Secretary.
SECRETARY BLINKEN: Thank you. Well, thank you very much, Madam Mayor. This is the third time we meet. I have such admiration for the Mayor’s extraordinary leadership on so many issues. We met for the first time talking about the climate and the incredible work Bogotá has done on climate change. We are here today to talk about migration and the challenges we face together. And in many of these areas, also COVID, the mayor and the city have done an extraordinary job.
If you step back for a minute, and we’ve talked about this before, we’re living through a period in the world where we have more people on the move, displaced from their homes, than at any other time in recorded history, over 100 millions of people around the world. And here in our own hemisphere, in the Americas, we feel it strongly every day. Guatemalans, Hondurans, Salvadorans, Haitians, Cubans, Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, so many people on the move, and it creates a tremendous challenge for all of us. What is changing now is that countries are coming together to take shared responsibility for meeting this challenge and also, we hope, to turn it into a real opportunity.
It’s hard to think of a place where that’s more the case than here in Colombia, where I think it’s an example of both extraordinary generosity and farsightedness, Colombia has now welcomed almost 2.5 million Venezuelans and is offering Temporary Protected Status for ten years to people from Venezuela. To date, about 1.5 million of the Venezuelans who are here have temporary protected status and that means they can work, they can send their children to school, they can be productive and contributing members of the community. , of society, and we are not going to have a lost generation of Venezuelans with their children unable to go to school and parents unable to go to work and put food on the table. So this is quite remarkable.
Here in this place, what we saw today is what could really be a model for many other places, where everything in one place people who come to their temporary protected status cards get services, connect to schools, connect to jobs, connect to support, social services, all here in this beautiful place, but it is part of the municipality of Bogotá. And it is a place that works for Colombians and it works for Venezuelans, and in fact, it works for the citizens of Bogotá now. So it’s a remarkable model.
The United States has been very honored and proud to help in this process. Throughout the crisis in Venezuela, for many years, we have provided almost $3 billion in assistance, assistance that has come here to Colombia and to other countries: Ecuador, Peru, etc. The president announced additional aid of 350 million dollars during the UN General Assembly. And some of the bulk of this is done through the United States Agency for International Development, which does remarkable work on the ground in many countries.
And we’re doing it in very practical ways. For example, here we have been able to provide financing so that Colombian banks can offer loans to small businesses started by Venezuelans. This is something that benefits them, but also powerfully benefits the community, because small businesses are engines of growth, engines of progress in all of our communities. So that’s just one example of the practical ways we’re working in partnership.
But I have to say, Madam Mayor, this is incredibly impressive. And I must say that it fills me with more hope that we will be able to not only manage this challenge but to do it in a way that is beneficial for all. So thanks for sharing this today. Thanks.
MS LOPEZ: Thank you. Thank you very much. I want to express once again our gratitude on behalf of Bogotá but also as Colombia. Thank you very much for the support, your support and the support of the Government of the United States, to our President Gustavo Petro in our common purpose of (inaudible).
SECRETARY BLINKEN: Thank you.
