The important labour migration of Colombians to Venezuela in the 1960s and 1970s developed in a special context of two countries with a common history and diplomatic relations marked by the demarcation of their land and sea borders. Both countries tried to attract with few success European Immigrants since their independence from the Spanish colonial regime. But only Venezuela became after the Second World war the last important destination country in Latin America for immigrants from Spain, Italy and Portugal due to its oil-based economy. At the same time, a large number of Colombian men and women arrived to Venezuela becoming the largest immigrant group in the 1970s.

While the regular migration movements between the two countries never constituted a problem, the flow of irregular Colombian migrants was perceived with concern and sometimes even with xenophobia in Venezuela and, in Colombia, the frequent deportations of their co-nationals was a recurrent topic in political discussions and in the news media. A bilateral agreement of 1959 on irregular migrants and direct conversations between the two governments could not resolve the problem. Only after the creation of the Andean Labour Migration Instrument (decision 116) of the Andean Group in 1977, the Venezuelan government decided to implement an amnesty for irregular migrants in 1980. The project focuses on the path to the temporary political solution of irregular migration from the perspective of the emigration country and, in general, on an early attempt of “migration management” in which were not only involved the governments of Colombia and Venezuela, but also the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the Andean Group.