Migration: How many people were leaving Colombia in 2024 to stay abroad?

The record number of visitors arriving in Colombia last year was accompanied by an incessant flow of people leaving the country, never to return .

According to the Ministry of Commerce, 6,696,835 non-resident travelers arrived in the country last year , which was a historic record, 8.5 percent more than in 2023. Of this number, 1,885,217 passengers were Colombians living abroad.

However, the total number of people arriving is higher, since in addition to non-residents, people who do live in the country also enter the territory , travel abroad but return.

Thus, until October alone - the most recent month available in the records published by the Civil Aeronautics - the total number of passengers - residents and non-residents - who arrived in Colombia was 8.91 million .

But there were more people leaving, and for every 100 people arriving in the country there were between 105 and 106 leaving , according to figures released by Aerocivil.

Thus, the registered passengers travelling from the country to abroad in the first ten months of the year were 9.41 million, almost half a million more than those who entered in that period .

In other words, between January and October of last year there were 492,253 people who left Colombia and did not return .

The trends that show the departure and entry of people from and to the country by air give a clear idea of ​​the overall behavior. The reason is that almost all emigration is by plane. According to the records of Migración Colombia, departures through airports represent 97 percent of the total. Those who leave by land do not even reach 3 percent; by sea, 0.1 percent, and by river, only 2 out of every 100,000 departures.

So far in 2024 until October, as usual, the only month that shows more people arriving than leaving the country was July, the month in which Colombians living abroad traditionally arrive to visit their families for the holiday season and then leave Colombia again.

Since the information published by Aerocivil is not yet available until December, the usual behavior suggests that for the entire year the number of people who left without returning would be similar to that registered until October, since in December there are usually more passengers arriving in the country than those who leave.

Following the pandemic, the number of people leaving for a period of 12 months began to grow from a figure of 256,000 people per year in December 2021, to a maximum of 507,000 people in November 2022.

Since then, the outflow of Colombians has stabilized at around half a million people per year, a level that remains stable.

However, this rate of departure of people after the pandemic is more than double that observed before Covid-19, which was around 200,000 people leaving the country per year, never to return .

For example, for the 12 months ending in February 2020, the number of Colombians who left the country and did not return was 204,483.

Looking at it from a long-term perspective, in the six years from January 2019 to last year, the cumulative number of people who have left the country reaches 1.9 million .

According to a recent study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Colombians who have left the country constitute the second nationality of the total immigrant population in Spain and the 11th in the United States.

According to the report, the United States is the country where the largest number of Colombian emigrants live, with a figure of 1,043,200 . Next is Spain, where the number of Colombian residents is 715,700. The report also says that there are 189,500 Colombians in Chile; 32,000 in Mexico; and 25,500 in Costa Rica.

In Spain, Colombians are the second largest source of immigrants after Moroccans, whose number amounts to 894,000, according to the OECD.