# **I Introduction**

Forced migrants, a population highly vulnerable to adverse shocks, were particularly at risk during the COVID-19 pandemic. Forced migrants often live in overcrowded houses with poor sanitary conditions that prevent many from adhering to non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI) (Kluge et al. 2020). Their utilization rates of formal health services was infrequent due to lack of access or fear of being detected and deported when living irregularly in the destination country (Zambrano-Barrag ́an et al. 2021). Poor and unstable job conditions, lack of coverage from formal social protection systems, and weaker social networks may have led to large drops in income and reliance on informal jobs mostly in the service sector with social contact. The combination of these factors con- frequent tributed to higher infection and death rates among forced migrants in comparison to the local population (ECDC 2021), and may have led to a sharp deterioration of their economic and social conditions.

Forced migrants posed an additional challenge for countries to control the pandemic. The high infection rates within migrant communities may have contributed to speed the transmission of the virus, as documented by evidence from previous spreads of infectious diseases (Montalvo and Reynal-Querol 2007, Baez 2011, Ib ́a ̃nez et al. 2021). The effective control of the pandemic required mechanisms for rapid testing, tracking of COVID-19 cases, and rolling out vaccination campaigns. Forced migrants with an irregular migratory status refrained, however, from using formal health services (Zambrano-Barrag ́an et al. 2021).

Regularization programs might have been an effective tool to help irregular migrants better navigate the pandemic and slow the transmission of the virus.<sup>1</sup> By providing access to healthcare, migrants might be more likely to seek medical support when contracting the virus and to vaccinate (Ib ́a ̃nez et al. 2021). Coverage of social protection systems, either through formal jobs or cash transfers, may reduce the negative income shock caused by the extended lockdowns.

This studies the effect of a of Venezuelan paper large regularization program migrants in Colombia on easing the health and economic impacts of the pandemic for forced migrants. The results provide consequential lessons on how to support forced migrants to better handle negative shocks and to strengthen their self-reliance.

# **II PEP: A Regularization Program for Venezuelan Forced Migrants**

Seven million Venezuelans had been forced to migrate from their country by 2022, as a consequence of Venezuela’s economic, political, and humanitarian crisis. Most migrated to Latin American countries, of which 2.5 million currently live in Colombia.<sup>2</sup> A large percentage of them were considered irregular migrants as they had overstayed their visas or had illegally crossed the border.

> 1Regularization programs usually provide migrants legal migratory status for a specific period of time, access to state services and job permits. Regularization programs differ from amnesties as their benefits are limited to a specific period of time.

> 2https://www.r4v.info/en retrieved on December 15, 2022.

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