Benjamin N. Gedan, Nicolás Saldías
Facing a competitive reelection campaign, Argentine President Mauricio Macri took an unexpected gamble last month in his choice of a running mate: Miguel Angel Pichetto, an opposition stalwart who has nonetheless helped the government advance critical reforms from his perch as the most senior senator from the Justicialist Party, the main political vehicle for the opposition Peronist movement.
The move was widely praised by analysts. Pichetto is a moderate, so he can help Macri lure Peronists who are anxious about their party’s more populist ticket, which includes the polarizing former President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner as its vice-presidential candidate.
But Macri’s choice of Pichetto could have implications far beyond the election. In particular, Pichetto has a long record as an immigration skeptic. As vice president, his views could embolden domestic anti-immigration factions even as the region struggles to address the Venezuelan migration crisis.
Pichetto rejects comparisons to the far-right Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, who is known for his tough-on-crime agenda. But as a longtime lawmaker, Pichetto has repeatedly made xenophobic statements linking migrants to crime in Argentina.
Migration to Argentina, he once said, helps Bolivia dump its poor and Peru export its criminals. Argentina’s slums, he added, have been “taken over by Peruvians.” The day before Macri chose him as his running mate, Pichetto created a diplomatic incident when he declared that “many criminals are Peruvians” at an event with the Peruvian ambassador in attendance.
For advocates of immigrants’ rights, Pichetto’s attitude is particularly worrisome because Macri himself has a mixed record on this issue.
In 2017, for example, Macri drew comparisons to President Donald Trump when he eased requirements for the deportation of migrants accused of crimes. Argentine human rights organizations unsuccessfully sued to block the measure, which caused deportations related to criminal activity to increase nearly 300 percent, from 239 in 2015, under Kirchner, to 703 last year.
Even before he announced Pichetto’s nomination, Macri was already hardening his security policies. His influential security minister, Patricia Bullrich, has sought to expand the use of force by police and limit rowdy public protests. Macri has also deployed the military to tighten Argentina’s porous borders, including to limit drug trafficking. And in his reelection campaign, security has been a major focus.
Pichetto would be a natural ally to Bullrich and other hardline Macri advisers, and he could push Macri to further toughen border policy as part of a broader emphasis on security issues in a second term.
Though Pichetto has mostly targeted Bolivians and Peruvians with his rhetoric, a shift toward a more restrictive immigration policy could also affect Venezuelans, who are fleeing to Argentina by the tens of thousands. There are now 127,000 in the country, with 100,000 more expected to arrive this year, making them the largest group of migrants entering Argentina for the first time in history.
Until now, Macri has put out the welcome mat. To ease their arrival and integration, he relaxed documentation requirements for residency and relocated Venezuelan professionals to help them find jobs where their skills are scarce.
Macri’s decision to select Pichetto as a running mate raises alarm bells about the future of Argentina’s pro-immigrant policies and its open door to Venezuelan migrants.But the rising numbers of displaced Venezuelans will likely put Macri’s open-door policies to the test, even without Pichetto in the administration. In its latest report, the United Nations refugee agency said Latin America had been “overwhelmed” by the migration crisis. The total number of Venezuelan migrants is expected to reach 5.4 million by year’s end, up from 3.4 million at the end of 2018.
The demographics of these migrants is also changing in ways that could dampen support in Argentina for liberal migration policies.
The first Venezuelans to arrive in Argentina, typically by plane, were educated and skilled, with 35 percent categorized as professionals. Argentina’s fledgling oil and gas sector was a major beneficiary of the exodus of Venezuela’s engineers and geologists.
But as the migration crisis worsens, the Venezuelan migrants to Argentina are increasingly less skilled. That could provokeimmigration hardliners like Pichetto, who are inclined to see migrants as threats to security and prosperity.
This is already occurring elsewhere in Latin America. In Ecuador, the January murder of a local woman by a Venezuelan migrant stoked xenophobia and led the government to impose new visa restrictions. “We have opened our doors, but we are not going to sacrifice anyone’s safety,” President Lenin Moreno said.
Peru, home to the second-largest number of Venezuelan migrants, also imposed new documentation requirements in June, including a valid passport, which is nearly impossible to obtain in Venezuela.
The same month, Chile, the third-largest recipient of Venezuelans, imposed visa requirements for Venezuelans to stem the inflow, mirroring its more restrictive policy toward Haitians.
Argentina is also grappling with large numbers of migrants from neighboring countries, including Paraguay and Bolivia, with 1.1 million absorbed in 2017 alone, according to the International Organization for Migration. They are arriving in a country mired in its worst recession in over a decade, with unemployment and poverty rising. Times are particularly tough in Greater Buenos Aires, the capital city and its outlying districts, where nearly all of the Venezuelans settle and where unemployment is over 12 percent.
Sixty-three percent of Venezuelans in Argentina have not found stable employment, and half earn less than $350 a month, according to a recent study.
So far, immigration has not been a major campaign issue, though Macri has warned that the opposition’s economic policies would bring about a Venezuela-style collapse. But unemployment and insecurity are top voter concerns, which could create political incentives to limit support for migrants.
In this delicate context, restrictionist figures like Pichetto often have the upper hand, aided by anti-immigrant sentiment fueled by social media. For that reason, Macri’s decision to select him as a running mate raises alarm bells about the future of Argentina’s pro-immigrant policies and its open door to Venezuelan migrants.
Benjamin N. Gedan is a senior adviser to the Latin American Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the director of its Argentina Project. He also serves as an adjunct professor at John Hopkins University. He is a former South America director on the National Security Council at the Obama White House.
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