Refugee claims in Brazil have increased 800% over the past 4 years

This was a major news story in the G1 - Globo website today. It's a real sign of the times we find ourselves living in and actually probably a real reflection of the economic growth and the political stability of this country that so many people are seeking to come to this country in order to find better lives.

So what does that mean to us expats. Don't get me wrong here I think this is great and I think Brazil could even do more to accept refugees. Everybody deserves to live in safety, to be able to work hard and earn the best possible lives that they can carve out for themselves.

My main concern is that Brazil's bureaucratic machine is simply not prepared nor is it capable of handling such a large influx of refugees. Even when they do something right here, they usually go about it in the wrong way! The immigrations laws here are woefully outdated and reflect the authoritarian attitudes of the Military Regime during which they were enacted. Even the president of the Conselho Nacional de Imigrações has stated publicly many times that they are inadequate and need to be completely re-written. They have created a system that generates backlogs in processing visa applications, endless waits for documentation that can be several years. Applications are passed from one agency to another and the paper shuffle is insane. Apply for "permanência definitiva" in Brazil and you need the patience of Job, because you're looking at 2 years or more buried under mountains of paperwork and wrapped up in miles of red tape before you get permanency granted. Then you start all over again to get your RNE and Cédula de Identidade Estrangeiro. It's positively absurd.

So, what happens with refugee claimants. Well, first of all they're all dealt with by a completely different government agency CONARE (Comitê Nacional dos Refugiados) and for the most part their cases are dealt with rather quickly as they rightly should be due to the urgency of their personal situations. That's what Brazil is doing right, but that's where it ends and then they start going about it all wrong.

Upon claiming refuge in Brazil the claimant has the immediate right to a CPF and Carteira de Trabalho e Previdência Social so they can start to work to support themselves...... all well and good so far. But, now they need all the other documents too, RNE, CIE, etc., etc., etc. Now they get thrown into the same bureaucratic machine the rest of us expats are in, those of us who have jumped through all the hoops, made it over all the hurdles and are forced (whether we like it or not) to wait for years just to get documentation. The machine moves at a snail's pace and sometimes even seems to be in reverse gear!

So, here's where the problem lies... instead of slotting the refugee claimants in the waiting line with the rest of us, they get bumped up to the head of the line. This forces all of us, who've been stuck here for 2 years and sometimes more, to wait that much longer.

It's not rocket science, but somehow the guys who occupying those plus seats in Brasília just can't get the message that the system as it is simply isn't capable of handling all the demand on documentation and must be streamlined. Either they've got to set up a completely separate system to deal with the documents for the refugee claimants or they've got to simply tell them that as far as documents go it's a "first come first served" system and they'll just have to wait in line like all the rest of us. Is that an unfair expectation? I think not. Once they're here in Brazil and can work, they're really out of harm's way, there is really no greater urgency for documents than we have, so why the need to bump them to the head of the line? But, rather than fix the system that's clearly broken down, they just simply patch it up at the expense of all the rest of us expats.