Peruvians Returning from Abroad to Live in Peru — the exodus begins
- Crowds at LAX, photo by Philip
Figures from Peru’s National Statistics Institute (INEI) show that increasing numbers of former expatriate Peruvians are returning to live again in Peru.
The immigration numbers from August 2008 alone show a signficant rise in Peruvians choosing to repatriate. About 12.7% more Peruvians (180,000 people) left other countries to return to Peru in August 2008 than did expatriate Peruvians in August 2007.
Israel Ruiz, writing for Living in Peru, summarizes the trend:
A 12.7 percent increase was registered in the number of Peruvians that returned to the Andean country in August 2008 when compared to the same month in 2007.
According to the country’s National Statistics Institute (INEI), over 180,000 Peruvians returned to the country during this month.
The study dubbed “The Evolution and migratory movement of Peruvians” also revealed that between January and August 2008, 6.4 percent more Peruvians returned to their homeland than in the same period in 2007.
Of the citizens that returned, it was reported that 47 percent came from Chile, 14.5 percent from the United States, 6.5 percent from Ecuador, 6.1 percent from Bolivia, 4.1 percent from Colombia and 3.9 percent from Argentina among other nations.
50.5 percent of those that returned were men while 49.5 percent were women.
Other INEI studies revealed that more foreigners were visiting Peru as well.
Just under 220,000 foreigners came into the country in August 2008, an 11 percent increase when compared to the same month in 2007.
The majority of the foreigners came from Chile – 34.4 percent and from the United States – 24.2 percent.
The rest came from Ecuador (13.2%), Bolivia (11.5%), Spain (8.5%), and Colombia (5.8%) among other countries.
These numbers indicate a substantial reversal of the trend from the 1980’s and ’90s, which saw large numbers of Peruvians flee their country during the brutal years of terrorist attacks, which were accompanied by hyper-inflation and lack of job opportunities.
No doubt Peru’s today’s growing economy and relative political stability are enticing Peruvians back to the nest.
Sounds like an exodus to me.
Barbara
I am an American writer who lived in Lima for seven years (2007-2014), where I covered Andean traditions, melting glaciers and daily life in the capital for Miami Herald, MSNBC and Huffington Post. I now live and work in northern Florida where I champion climate change advocacy and compassionate, affordable eldercare.
7 Comments
el kibitzer
Barb,
remember my what i said in my blog: “…i wonder if illegal immigrants want to remain here” I think it is a combination of the downturn in the economy and so many immigration issues, unfortunately hispanics are being unjustly targeted. you are right, it is an exodus. 🙁
chau for now! el “kibitzer”
ps. i added a link to your blog. hint, hint…
Barb
El Kibitzer,
Yes, there is a horrible witchhunt going on right now in the U.S., with Homeland Security raiding workplaces and family homes as they seize undocumented immigrants. So dreadful.
I’m also disturbed that some backward elements in the U.S. are blaming blacks and Hispanics for the subprime mortgage crisis. That blame is so misplaced. The banking industry itself is at fault. It infuriates and saddens me to read the hateful comments that some white Americans are posting online. Trends like that are ominous.
I will be writing soon about blogs by Peruvians living in the U.S., so hold onto your hat, EK. Right now I am aware of Peruvian bloggers in Washington DC, New Jersey, Chicago and Miami. I’d like to find more.
Koca
I’m one of them, not by choice. I was deported after 17 years living in USA. Last year my work permit expired and my legal status with it… They (inmigration officers)came to look for me at my job(it was easy to find me, worked all these time in the same company), handcuff me, put me in a “processing center” (for all of us jail) for 2 months until the paper work clear up, and here I am… in a complete change city (lima) and the same old stories of corruption, transit (can’t find courage to drive around here), discrimination against age (all jobs are for people between 18-25years old), but…. I’m happy to be back, like you said, I don’t have to worry about credit cards, I forgot living paying in cash!!! and of course, the food!!
Barb
Koca, thank you for sharing your story with my readers. It takes courage to do that. What a horrific ordeal you have been through. I am very sorry. Yes, Lima has good food, but that is little compensation for being thrown into jail and exported.
Can you tell me where in the US you were living?
I agree that Peru’s age-discrimination is horrific. The average Peruvian is 24 years of age, and ads in newspapers routinely specify that applicants be “between 25 and 35 years of age” only.
Koca
I used to live in Ft. Lauderdale, but the last four months I was living in Texas (two of them locked up)
richard luna
Yes, I agree with you all that economics is getting bad here in the US and every where else too, I also agree that it is sad that all undocumented (illegal) inmigrants are been targeted but … as the name says …”UNDOCUMENTED and ILLEGAL” we all traveled to US in search of new life and new opportunities … some of you got lucky and got the documents some others not … so they choose to live in the illegal state.. and with that waiting for the consequence of one day the undocumented will be found and deported, sadly after many years of forming a new live. … nothing to blame to the US or US citizens they are just enforcing THEIR laws of THEIR country. Same way in our country we enforce our laws (which in some cases are tainted and corrupted .. which is bad bad and sad very sad).
In Peru, if they want to exercise the inmigration laws they can fine you and put you in jail too (and forget that you exists) and they can also deport you ( but … key word is if they WANT but their memory of the law can be “manipulated” ).
In Brazil, they also go to job centers and check for illegal workers, and their laws are also very strict, one of my co-workers an engineer from chile was found with a visa expired by 1 day .. they gave him 24 hrs to leave Brazil and that was because our company had a lawyer otherwise they were going to take him to the “processing center”.
Anyhow just my opinion.
In regards of job hunting in Peru, I found out interesting that job centers can advertise ” between 18 to 35″ or ” joven nisei” or “joven de buena presencia” (no feos).
I left peru when I was 10 yrs old … if I want to go back I would feel like a foreigner.. bearly make the age … I am not nisei .. .. no se si mi presencia les gustaria (hehehe aunque no soy feo hehehehe solo chiquito, gordito y calvo hehehehehe).
what I heard is that to get a good job it is base on who is your connection or may be who can help you if you make him/her richer (saaaaaddddd).
what else is left .. oh yeah … put a business … 8 out of 10 friends that went to peru and started a business (they are professionals in different areas) returned to US broke. the 2 that are still there is because they started their business with their family that already were settle in lima for many years (already in the loop).
My conclusions …. I want to go back to Peru .. hehehehe I love the food, the kindness of regular people, their women, the party even though I now I will get broke.
I hate their process but I love the people and its folklore.
Ok … just me … big hug to all.
Naturalizedgringo
I made a long comment on other forum in this site and felt another temptation to make one. I mentioned about my original country became one of top richest countries from poverty worse than peru 40 years ago. A lot of my folks went to all over the world as illegan alien to make ends meet. I visited the country a few yers ago for the first time since I left and they have now that illegal immigrant problem from all over the third world countries. It was little odd or funny to me, upside down change in 30 years. Do I like it or am I proud of it? No! Not at all. The arrogance coming from the sudden change of economic prosperity and the life style of non-stop merry-go-round daily life is quasi-hell without mentioning about the pollution and high rise buildings like a boxes in the warehouse.
I rarely have seen any Americans are that arrogant even their country is the super power.
But I have to point that out one thing every one is reluctant to say for the reason of political correctness. I seldom go to Wal-Mart because it is too crowd and full of cheapy stuffs. But whenever I go I always see more than half of the shoppers are Hispanic and with bunch of kids. I see young teeager looking Hispanic chicas having 5 or more kids all the time. I shook my head every time I see that. My generation in my original culture has lot of siblings because the number of kids means good insurance policy for high mortality of infant death and good social security when parents get old to my parents generation. But in this industrial society with nuclear family, big family is not a good insurance policy any more to the parents and major stumbling block to make quantum leap from the third world to the advanced.
So what thay did was intensive campaign to make family size smaller. Every parents wanted to have as many sons as possible because it was male dominant society. There were lot of families had 10 children with only son at the last minute. I am not exagerating at all. So the campaign’s catch phrase was “2 kids only whther girl or boy”.
The only difference between my country and all the south American coutries was this family size except mine has no natural resources at all and all the south American countries have vast lands and unbelievable natural resources. We had corruption, police brutality, coup-de-tat, dictatorship, street demonstration, smells of urine every 20 feet on every street, no tap water, no sewer system, polluted streams, deforested mountains, inefficiency, being jailed without trial, guilty unless proven innocent, ….. you name it we had it. Our public school distrbuted wormer tablets to students periodically because we had full of parasites in internal organs coming from all the vegitables in result of using human waste as a fertilizer. Then how they turned the country into an advaced rich one from the bottom in a single generation?
There is co-relationship between education and family size. The more educated you are the less children you want. It is not Newton’s natural law so we can not tell why but it is an undeniable truth. Now it becomes a matter of whether egg is the first or hen. The more children you have the less you will have your children get education.
The vicious cycle of more children and less education go on and on.
The education is only catalyst which makes a society being metamorphosed from the uncivil to civility, ineficiency to efficiency, and this will do domino effects on others including corruption, political stability, and etc. The good example is China even she has still long way to go to achieve all others. But they broke the vicious cycle despite of all the liberal’s protest as being inhumane from all over the world.
In Latin America it is totally different story. More than 90 % of the population is catholic which Vatican endoctrinates their value of life and quite significant portion of population is indigenous or mixture of them which still have tremendous challenge to adapt to this culture of modern civilization like American Indians. It is very interesting to watch but I’ll be gone to eternity by that time.
What is my point?
Only Latino’s can change their fate. Latinos have everything in their land except their will to change. Blaming gringo will not help to make the change.