Exhausted Venezuelans' desperate Peru quest toughens with new restrictions

Desperate Venezuelan migrants who made it across the border in time were breathing a sigh of relief hours before Peru's tightened controls came into effect today, preventing those not carrying passports from entering.

"We have been on the road for five days. We travelled by bus and saw people, Venezuelans, walking along the road," Jonathan Zambrano, 18, told AFP.

Thousands of migrants fleeing the crippling economic crisis in their homeland had faced a race against time to cross into Peru from either Ecuador or Colombia after last week's announcement from Lima that they had one week to enter before a passport would be required.

Until today, a simple identity card was enough for Venezuelans heading south to escape food and medicine shortages, hyperinflation and failing public services back home.

At one border crossing, Peruvian officers handed out balloons to exhausted children, but many Venezuelans feared it would be a different story once the new rules come into force.

"People arrive with very few resources and after having travelled, five or six days being the shortest. There are people who've been travelling for months," Regine de la Portilla of the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR told AFP.

Ecuador opened a "humanitarian corridor" yesterday and lifted its own entry restrictions to facilitate the Venzuelans' travels to Peru, one of the region's fastest growing economies with 4.7 per cent growth projected for next year.

Ecuadoran Interior Minister Mauro Toscanini said yesterday that 35 busloads of migrants were on the move along the route authorities had opened to Peru. "We are going to continue as long as we can," said the minister, whose country is being crossed by tens of thousands of Venezuelans seeking to join relatives and take up work opportunities in Peru, Chile and beyond.

Colombia had criticised its two southern neighbours for implementing travel restrictions, warning it wouldn't stop migration. Ecuador -- where close to half a million people have fled this year alone -- heeded the warning and lifted its week-long requirement for Venezuelans to produce a passport, all the while helping those migrants reach Peru.

Peru's citizens largely supported the move, though, worried about the impact that the 400,000 Venezuelans already in the country would have.

"On the one hand, we're sorry for the Venezuelan people, but they are taking a job away from a Peruvian," said Giannella Jaramillo, who runs a clothes stall in Aguas Verdes, practically on the border with Ecuador. "It's hard to help more people."