Papers, Paychecks, and Plans: Analyzing the Venezuelan Diaspora in Latin America

Over 8 million Venezuelans have left their country since 2014, mostly settling in Latin America. Using original survey data from nearly 3,000 Venezuelan migrants across nine Latin American countries, this paper examines how legal immigration status shapes labor market integration and settlement intentions. Legal status is strongly associated with better labor market outcomes: migrants with documentation are 30.5 percentage points more likely to receive wages through a bank account, 21.6 pp more likely to hold a written employment contract, and similarly more likely to contribute to social security, pay taxes, and hold formal jobs—associations that are robust across specifications, bootstrap inference, and leave-one-out analysis. Legal status alone, however, is not associated with wanting to stay in the host country: legal and undocumented migrants report virtually identical settlement intentions. There is suggestive evidence that a link between legal status and settlement may materialize when legal status is paired with formal employment, particularly written contracts. The findings point to the potential value of complementing regularization programs with measures that facilitate formal employment, financial inclusion, and labor market integration.