Pubdate: Wed, 28 July, 1999
Source: Tampa Tribune (FL)
Copyright: 1999, The Tribune Co.
Contact:  http://www.tampatrib.com/
Forum: http://tampabayonline.net/interact/welcome.htm
Section: Nation/World
Author: Jeremy McDermott, Tribune correspondent

WAR-WEARY COLOMBIANS EMIGRATE IN RECORD NUMBERS

MEDELLIN, Colombia - Colombians are clamoring to leave as chaos builds with
rebels attacking and the economy in a free fall.

There is an exodus from Colombia, a stampede to leave what many see as a
sinking ship, drowning in a tide of violence, kidnapping and poverty, and
the preferred destination of the frantic brain drain is the United States.

Colombians are emigrating from their war-torn country in record numbers.
The United States, particularly Florida, is their favorite haven as they
seek to escape mass kidnapping, massacres, rampant crime and the worst
economic recession in more than 50 years.

A Gallup poll conducted in June found that 56 percent of Colombians desired
to leave their country, for good.

In the past four months alone, 65,000 Colombians have fled with one-way
tickets, and authorities estimate that one of every five Colombians leaving
the country has no plans to return. The Department of Administrative
Security, which monitors airports and borders, estimates that by the end of
the year more than 300,000 Colombians, mainly the well-educated and
better-qualified citizens, will have fled.

In the United States, visa requests now take more than five months to
process, so huge is the demand. For those with money there are ways of
circumventing the queues.

An industry has sprung up to furnish Colombians with U.S. visas. An ED5
visa that brings with it automatic residence requires an upfront investment
of $500,000.

Others, like a L1 visa, cost $30,000, which grant residence for a few
years, with the option to renegotiate later. These types have U.S.
approval, a reward for investment in depressed areas of the country.

The demand for passports in Bogota has increased by 30 percent this year.
The figure in Medellin is even more startling, up 47 percent, as people
prepare to flee and begin the round of visa applications.

Other popular destinations are Canada, Spain, Costa Rica and Argentina.

Analysts are comparing the exodus with that of Ireland in the last century,
Spain during its civil war, and more recently Cuba in the 1960s.

Diana Uribe, one of Colombia's leading sociologists, said the exodus
reveals a country in profound crisis, where society is breaking down.

"When a million people leave [it] is because that society is not viable, it
does not offer future possibilities,'' Uribe said.

She believes that emigration is not something that people undertake
lightly, it is usually a last resort when all hope has been lost.

"The problem is that emigration is a very painful process, a total
uprooting, and in our case it is worse because we are a corralled society
in which only those that can are emigrating, others would if they could,''
she said.

Colombia has long been a nation in crisis. The guerrilla insurgency is 35
years old, and before that was La Violencia between rival political
parties, which left hundreds of thousands dead.

What has changed is that Colombia has lost hope. Despite a nascent peace
process with the country's largest rebel group, the 17,000-strong
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known by its Spanish initials FARC,
polls indicated that more than 70 percent of people doubt the rebels have a
genuine desire for peace.

Kidnapping is at a record high and has become indiscriminate. The rebels
have developed a tactic called "miraculous fishing,'' named after Jesus'
promise to make his disciples fishers of men. This involves random
roadblocks set up throughout the country. Whoever happens to pass through
is netted.

In the past four months the National Liberation Army, known by its Spanish
initials ELN, the country's second rebel group with 5,000 fighters, has
staged a series of mass abductions that has struck to the very heart of
society, showing that nowhere is safe, nobody can escape the war.

The first of these high-profile operations was conducted in April when five
ELN guerrillas, one disguised as a priest, hijacked a domestic flight. They
forced the plane to land on a remote, jungle airstrip where more guerrillas
waited. All the passengers and crew were herded into canoes and led into
captivity in the jungle.

At the end of May, Sunday's church service in the city of Cali was
interrupted by 30 armed guerrillas who forced more than 150 people, the
whole congregation, including elderly, women, children and the priest, into
trucks. Some were abandoned on the journey, but many were marched on foot
into captivity in the jungle-covered mountains south of the city.

Then in June, a fishing club returning from a weekend trip was intercepted
by heavily armed rebels in speedboats who kidnapped nine.

Maria Gonzalez is a 25-year-old Colombian who is leaving for Great Britain.
She is from a rich Bogota family, her father the president of a
multinational company. Her uncle was released some months ago after being
held by FARC more than a year. A huge ransom was paid. She drives around in
an armored car and cannot socialize or go shopping, so high is the threat.

"I can't take it any more, I want a normal life. So I am going, and I don't
know when I am coming back,'' she said.

But the final nail in Colombia's coffin for the immigrants is the economy.
The country, has plummeted into the worst recession this century, and
indications are that things will get worse. Unemployment is running more
than 20 percent, and factories are closing at an accelerating rate. The
Colombian peso was again devalued in June. Colombians with jobs see their
buying power evaporating before their eyes, and those without jobs see
little chance of finding one. 
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