Colombians abroad the world

Some statistics and overall overview

As a Colombian, I have always have family or friends that have left Colombia. I am not the exception and I am sure that every family has someone close that lives outside Colombia. So I am not surprised to find out the overall economics, behaviour and trends of the Colombians abroad.

Maybe for a gringo the idea of leaving the country to find better opportunities, starting from cero a new life and potentially endangering its own life is a foreign concept. Here (and maybe is a Latin-American phenomena) is more usual to do that.

First of all, the most common number I found was that 5 million Colombians live outside Colombia. In perspective that is a LOT, almost 10% of the overall population. I knew it was a lot but still was a surprised.

Colombia is a country that has been in conflict since 1948. The political conflict has altered the dynamic of our country, we have become a nation of migrants, first, people have to be internally displaced, a lot of people had to flee their farms and lands to escape. That is the story of my grandmother, she and 7 more siblings had to flee to Bogota, without knowing anyone in the city they had to start a new life in the 1950s.

I bet Colombia is the country with one of the highest number of internal displacement.

Now, since the 1980 with the narcotrafic and violence, the wave has pushed people to keep migrating. Since then, migration abroad was steady and significant, and lots of people migrated to the US, the main host country.

We Colombians always have had a fascination and some sort of conecetion with US. A lot of people still keep as their dream and goal to be able to travel there, go to the Orlando parks, Miami, New York… Its a cultural and a political affinity towards America, and is a trend that I am sure is not going away.

Data says that around 1.5 millions of Colombians are in the US, here is its distribution according to birth:

A lot of them reside in Florida. As you know the latino community there is big and I can imagine a network of “support” among Colombians there. I can imagine people arriving there and bringing over new people by the testimonies they have.

Also language barrier could make Florida a big hub for Colombians. As you can imagine, English levels here are not that high, people in high school are not really interested in learning English, which I find stupid because the best thing Colombian schools do is having English classes, in which sometimes they have extra emphasis on it. My friends didn’t really care about it, and many of them migrated to US and Australia, having trouble at the beginning because they never learnt the language. How ironic.

But also I can relate to all people trying to migrate to US. US is the land of the opportunities and that mindset still ingrained in us Colombians. We are used to work and receive a salary that does not really align with the effort nor it always is a lot of money, many people here live their lives day by day. So I can see the lure of having the opportunity to earn in dollars, working hard yes, but at least having money to save some and send back home.

Which brings me to the next big topic that is money coming from abroad: remittances.

According to the World Bank, received remittances correspond to the 2.8% of the GDP in 2022. That is a lot of money.

People here depend on people abroad. As I mentioned you, is not hard to meet people who have family or friends living abroad.

Lastly, one thing I found touching is the attachment people still have with Colombia. People leave and never know when they will come back, specially the people that know that are going to stay as without migrant status. People contact their family on daily basis, which confirm a constant attachment to the country, family is the main core that can explains many of the cultural behaviours in Colombia, just look this graphic:

Colombians represent a reality of the country: Colombia is a country that is always in crisis but never implodes nor becomes unliveable. People want to get better opportunities and sadly here they never find the right way to do it. Migrating help a lot of people and their families. Up to the point that people would have a doubt of coming back to Colombia:

“Most of the survey participants (47%) planned on staying outside Colombia lifelong. Another 30% planed on staying for longer than five years. Nevertheless, a significant share (23%) planed on returning after 5 or fewer years. More specifically, a small percentage (2%) already returned to Colombia, 6% planned on returning in less than two years, 7% planned to return in 2-3 years, and 8% in 4-5 years.”

People settle and make home and life outside their country. Which propose a challenge like talent leaving the country as well money. People would prefer not to risk their economic stability by coming back home. The information and numbers were taken from this PDF ig you are interested into looking at it: https://growthlab.hks.harvard.edu/files/growthlab/files/2021-05-cid-wp-397-diaspora-internationalization-colombian-economy.pdf

This is just a brief description of how Colombians would think about migrating and leaving the country, the reasoning behind and why they make the decision. US still propose a lifestyle that is appealing to many of the people here. As I mentioned when starting this article, this idea of starting a new life is hard and foreign for many Americans and europeans, not many of them would leave everything behind to go to Colombia and start all over.

Colombia is a country that you can come and enjoy with money and a sweet income in dollars, it makes the Colombia experience way better, thats what is happening now and why many people are interested in this beautiful country.