Argentines emigrate to Brazil in record numbers – 06/11/2023 – World

To the questions of where to get mate, fernet, alfajores or good empanadas, common in online groups of Argentines living in Brazil, there are more and more posts like “tips on neighborhoods to rent a house”, “where to look for job openings? ” and “help to get the RNE”, the foreign document.

It is a symptom of what electronics technician Pedro Canova, 62, calls, in hyperbole, the “invasion of Argentines”. Or, as the chambermaid Cecília, 39, describes it, “a constant”. “Every time there’s someone asking how to do the papers for the residency.”

With the cooling of Covid and the intensification of the crisis, the number of citizens of the country who came to Brazil and asked for residency was a record in the last year in relation to the historical series, started in 2010: 6,601.

The data, gathered by the Observatory of International Migrations (OBMigra) at the request of the Sheet, show that the figure represents an increase of 21.7% compared to that recorded in 2019, the last year before the health crisis and, until then, holder of the highest mark, with 5,424. In relation to 2021, the increase is 82%.

For specialists and diplomatic sources, the figure is linked to a demand that has been dammed up by the pandemic, but is linked to the worsening of the local economy — the thorn in the side of Alberto Fernández’s management.

Argentines who arrived in the country in 2022 cite this factor as a priority. “The crisis was the triggering effect”, says Canova, who works with electronics and refrigeration and has been in Brazil for a year.

Born in the municipality of Concepción del Uruguay, he now lives in Balneário Camboriú —he already knew Brazil and had also studied Portuguese. A father of five, he will soon be joined by a daughter, who is finishing her degree in surgical instrumentation in Argentina and already plans to live in Brazil.

Self-employed, Pedro says that, in the pandemic, he was only at home for a week, because he had to work. But given the crisis that customers were going through, it was difficult to charge amounts that would guarantee their livelihood. “Here an electronics technician is valued. In Argentina, not. I earn three times more in Brazil.”

For economist Gustavo Perego, commercial director of the consulting firm Abeceb, in Buenos Aires, “the Argentine political system is not responding to the problems”. “There is a process of inflationary inertia that grows more and more, a destruction of consumption capacity. The government no longer has the muscle to get around the situation. And that leads many people to ask themselves about the future elsewhere.”

He draws attention to the price of food. While inflation in the country broke a record in April and reached 109% in the last 12 months, the annual index projected for the food sector is 197%, showed a study by UBA (University of Buenos Aires). And the expectation for the coming months is not better either. “The situation in the second half, with the political vacuum of the elections, tends to get worse.”

Cecília, who prefers not to give her last name, arrived in Brazil on December 31, 2021, shortly after the borders were reopened. Her sister already lived in the country, and the main reason for coming, besides that, was to feel that her money “was worthless”. “Here I have opportunities that I don’t have there. To eat bread, meat and vegetables on the same day, it was because you had a lot of money. Even drinking mate was getting expensive.”

But the reallocation of Argentine professionals in Brazil, even those who are specialized labor, can take time. Civil engineer Martin Colli, 36, arrived a year ago and is still looking for a job in his field at a Brazilian company. For now, he works remotely for an Argentine firm — and, receiving his salary in Argentine pesos, he has yet to see a real shift in purchasing power.

Martin lived in the city of Bahía Blanca and, before coming to Brazil, he studied other possibilities in South America. “But, regardless of the political situation, Brazil remains a world power”, he says, who, however, regrets the delay in entering the market. “I thought it would take a month or two.”

The presence of Brazilians living in Argentina is also representative. The latest data from the Itamaraty, referring to 2021, show that there were 90,200 Brazilians in the neighboring country – an underreported figure, since immigrants do not necessarily have to make contact with the consular sector in Brazil.

The number is close to Argentine estimates of the number of Brazilians in the country —95,000— and makes Brazilians the eighth main foreign group to reside in the country, behind, in descending order, Paraguayans, Bolivians, Peruvians, Venezuelans, Chileans, Uruguayans and Colombians.

Argentina, on the other hand, does not have historical data recording the emigration of its nationals, as recently shown by the checkpoint site Chequeado, which delved into the subject after figures such as former president and opponent Maurício Macri claimed that today there is an “exodus growing number of Argentines”.

The migration of Argentines to Brazil —and vice versa— is facilitated and reduced bureaucracy both by the Mercosur residence agreement, the bloc that the two countries are part of, and by a specific agreement between Brasília and Buenos Aires enacted in 2009 to facilitate the granting of residence for migrants.

The increase in migration has awakened, among specialists who follow the subject, concern about possible labor abuses. The subject runs underneath the data, but reports show that there are more and more Argentines looking for seasonal jobs in plantations at harvest time.

In February, four workers from the country, including a 14-year-old teenager, were rescued in Nova Petrópolis, in Rio Grande do Sul, by the Federal Police. They worked cutting eucalyptus trees and were in a situation analogous to slavery.

Historically, however, Argentines represent a small portion of foreigners rescued in slavery-like work in Brazil — they accounted for 0.2% of all such rescues from 2003 to 2022, according to the Ministry of Labor. The main nationalities are Bolivians (42%), Haitians (24%) and Venezuelans (12%), immigrants who, in general, enter Brazil in a situation of greater vulnerability.