The legislation is criticized for bureaucratizing the issuance of humanitarian visas, a device that regularizes the stay of migrants in Brazil
The shade of the mango trees that surround the Ver-o-Peso market, located in Belém (PA), was one of the few comforts in the daily life of the indigenous people of the Warao ethnic group. Every morning women dispersed through the streets of the historic center of the capital of Pará to ask for money, sometimes carrying their children in their arms. The men and other children remained around the fair, taking care of the family's belongings. At night, they stayed in the market stalls.
One of the city's main postcards, the open-air commerce on the banks of Guajará Bay served for months as housing for indigenous people from Venezuela, who began migrating to the region in mid-September. The arrival of the group stirred up tensions at the port: to escape the torrential rains so typical of the Amazon winter, they sought shelter next to the tents, which caused numerous conflicts with some of the traders, who accused them of harming sales. They also suffered threats from some homeless people and drug users with whom they share the street shelter. The indigenous people say that their handicrafts were stolen, as well as clothes, cell phones, money and food, as revealed in the preview of the anthropological report prepared by the Human Rights Commission of the Brazilian Bar Association - Pará section (OAB – PA).
Since the beginning of this semester, we have noticed the growth of the group, which today has approximately 100 indigenous people, almost half of whom are children. According to the survey, the incidence of vomiting and diarrhea was common among young people living on the streets, sometimes causing them to be hospitalized. In October, a baby less than a year old died as a result of pneumonia, which is suspected to have been aggravated by exposure to strong sun and rain.
The risk of grooming is also great. Anthropologist Marlise Rosa, a doctoral candidate at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), reports in her research on the group's migration in Brazil the case of a couple who allegedly offered money to a Warao mother in exchange for her children and who witnessed the His visit to Ver-o-Peso in October saw a woman asking to “take home” a girl of around three years old. Last week, the group was transferred to two shelters maintained by the State Department of Social Assistance.
Despite the serious situation, Belém is only the most recent case. Starting in 2014, with the worsening of the Venezuelan economic crisis and the subsequent cut in public policies aimed at indigenous peoples under President Nicolás Maduro's government, the Warao began to cross the border with the state of Roraima in search of temporary jobs and other jobs seeking desperate for medical care. In May of this year, a community of 519 individuals was already established in Manaus (AM), according to a technical opinion issued by the Federal Public Ministry of Amazonas (MPF - AM). However, the study points out that the difficulty of obtaining work and the decrease in donations caused the group to move once again, following the flow of the Amazon River until reaching Pará. According to data from the Public Defender's Office of the State of Pará ( DPE – PA), the indigenous people also settled along the way in the municipality of Santarém, located in the southwest of the state, where 130 indigenous people live.
HUMANITARIAN VISA
But even on this side of the border, many Warao found themselves without guarantees of permanence due to a legal issue. Brazil is a signatory to the 1951 International Convention on the Status of Refugees, which provides for the request for refuge in the country to immigrants who are being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a certain social group or political opinions and cannot or do not want to return to their country of origin. The Convention was ratified with the enactment of Law No. 9.474 of 1997, which guarantees refugees the rights to take up residence in the country and work regularly, for example. However, because their movement to Brazilian territory has essentially economic motivations, the government has understood that the Warao people do not qualify for refugee status under the law.
Limited to the 180 days granted by the tourist visa, the Warao's stay began to be treated as illegal by the Federal Police, as many of them had either expired documents or did not present any type of identification. This culminated in the largest attempt at mass deportation, carried out in December last year, with the detention of 450 Warao Venezuelans in a clandestine situation in Boa Vista, capital of Roraima. The PF's action was supported by Law 6.815 of 1980, known as the Foreigner Statute, still in force at the time and which allowed collective compulsory withdrawals. Before reaching their destination, however, a federal court injunction prevented collective deportation.
“Brazil is still facing the issue of Venezuelan migration from a public security point of view, under the false pretense that we are protecting our borders. And to another extent, in the field of discourse, migration here has recently become a political issue. After all, the migrant who is here in Brazil does not vote, becoming a preferential target for criticism, as he will not be an agent of the elections, that is, he will not vote. In this way, it is possible, in the view of the creators of this political agenda, to attack the fundamental rights of the migrant, as this will not be reflected in that person who runs as a candidate”, defines Luís Renato Vedovato, professor of international law at Unicamp.
He highlights that there is hope with the new Migration Law, nº 13.445, sanctioned on the 21st of 2017, replacing the Foreigner Statute drawn up during the period of the military regime. The text has a human rights-oriented approach to migration, covering issues such as the regulation of visas and residence for humanitarian reasons and the decriminalization of immigrants' participation in political events, including the possibility of participating in unions and protests.
Although the new law is considered progressive, regulatory decree 9.199 – a legal provision issued by President Michel Temer that determines the application of the law – contradicts the legislation on several points. To get an idea of the disparity, while the Migration Law has 100 articles, the decree has 319 articles and contains 70 ordinances. “The new Migration Law is a milestone in protecting the rights of immigrants in relation to the Foreigner Status. But the regulatory decree mischaracterizes it, to the point of contradicting the law itself”, defines Vedovato.
The decree postpones, for example, the granting of humanitarian visas, which was considered one of the great innovations of the Migration Law. The legislation provides for the granting of temporary visas for humanitarian reception, which guarantees a one-year visa "to a stateless person or national of any country" who is experiencing a natural catastrophe or who does not fall under the refugee law, and even to the migrant should not be deported or repatriated. In practice, the decree makes issuing a visa an even more bureaucratic and time-consuming process: the document will only be issued after consensus from the Ministries of Justice, Foreign Affairs and Labor in charge of defining the conditions, deadlines and requirements for issuance.
Another point criticized is allowing the Federal Police to detain immigrants in a “situation of entry impediment”, a vague term that can mean either an immigrant with actual criminal problems, or an immigrant who simply does not have all the necessary documentation. The article contradicts the law that determined that immigrants living illegally in Brazil could not be arrested and should respond to the expulsion process in freedom, with legal help from the Brazilian government.
In the new law, the Executive also vetoed the free movement of indigenous people and traditional populations across borders, on traditionally occupied lands. Temer's justification is that this would conflict with the Constitution, which imposes “control of the entry and exit of Indians and non-Indians”.
SELF-DETERMINATION
OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES
According to the most recent report from the Ministry of Justice, 3.971 Venezuelan asylum requests were registered in Brazil in 2016, which is equivalent to 33% of the total requests registered in the country that year. These requests are analyzed by the National Committee for Refugees (CONARE), which usually takes some time. Proof of this is that in 2016 only 14 requests were approved by the Brazilian government.
An attempt to alleviate this situation was the approval in March 2017 of Normative Resolution 126, by the National Immigration Council (CNIg), which allows temporary residence to be granted to migrants who enter Brazil by land and who are from border countries such as These are the cases of Venezuela, Republic of Guyana, French Guiana and Suriname. The measure establishes that citizens of these countries can enjoy the same rights as the free movement agreement signed by the 15 permanent and associated members of Mercosur: they can enter with a tourist visa and, after three months, request temporary residence for two years. The problem has been the low adherence to this measure, due to the fee being charged in the amount of R$478,58.
In the opinion of professor from the Department of Anthropology at the Federal University of Amazonas (UFAM) Sidney Antônio da Silva, Brazil still fails to take into account the specificities of the Warao people. He has coordinated the Migration Studies Group in the Amazon (Gema) since 2007 and reports that at the border, afraid of being stopped by Federal Police agents, indigenous people walked on foot through a detour and crossed over to the Brazilian side without any official document of identity. entry into the country. From Pacaraima (RR), they went to the capital Boa Vista and then to Manaus (AM), where, through the mediation of the Municipal Secretariat for Women, Social Assistance and Human Rights (SEMMASDH) they all completed the asylum request process in Brazil. .
“The presence of the Warao in the northern region of the country is marked by a constant coming and going to their cities and communities of origin. This dynamic of seasonal mobility is characterized by a longer period of stay in Brazil and a shorter period of time in Venezuela, which allows the Warao to have access to resources and accumulate money to take home to their families, returning with handicrafts for sale. ”, explains Sidney.
He emphasizes that although the asylum request does not require documentation, there is no guarantee that it will be granted. This is one of the reasons for the urgency of regulating visas and residence for humanitarian reasons along the lines of those granted to Haitians and people affected by the war in Syria. “It is a human right to come and go, especially for indigenous peoples who live and move through territories that precede the formation of national states. Limiting this transit hurts the self-determination of original peoples”, he concludes.
