Foreign Affairs minister Rafael Roncagliolo said Wednesday that the government will aim to boost support for Peruvians living abroad through the implementation of a new program, state news agency Andina reported.
Roncagliolo said that the ministry will provide 27 percent of its budget for the program, called the Optimization of the Policy for Protection and Attention for Peruvian Communities Abroad.
The representative for Peru in the Andean Parliament, Alberto Adrianzen, said that some 1,100 Peruvian immigrants to the United States were deported in the past 19 months, the majority for being in the country without documents.
Adrianzen said that many of the Peruvians who were deported had lived in the United States many years and paid taxes, and said the expulsions were due to the country’s ineffective immigration system.
According to the Foreign Affairs Ministry, 677 Peruvians were deported in 2010, including 181 reported by the consulate in Los Angeles, 134 in Houston, and 88 in Washington, D.C.
However, these figures hardly compare to the number of Mexicans and Guatemalans deported for lacking proper documentation. According to Adrianzen, 278,320 Mexican nationals and 28,160 Guatemalans were deported from the U.S. in 2010.
