9 Feb 2021 The government of Colombia announced Monday that it would offer temporary protected status for ten years to Venezuelan refugees who entered the country illegally, essentially offering a pathway to legal residency for nearly a million people. Colombian officials estimate that 1.7 million of the about 6 million Venezuelans who fled the socialist dictatorship are in Colombia, most of them illegally. Venezuela and Colombia share a long, often poorly secured border, and the regime of dictator Nicolás Maduro has deliberately complicated the process for Venezuelans to obtain passports and other legal documents necessary to leave the country, exacerbating the worst migrant crisis in the history of the Americas.