Besserer Rayas et al. Comparative Migration Studies (2024) 12:47 resulted in many Venezuelans being eligible for dual citizenship. It remains unclear how many Colombians emigrated to Venezuela and how many can claim Colombian nationality; however, the Venezuelan census counted 700,000 in 2011 (Rodríguez, 2018). Studies estimate over one million direct descendants of Colombians living in Venezuela had a right to Colombian nationality in 2018 (Rodríguez, 2018) and 980,000 in 2022 (R4V, 2022). These numbers are high since Colombian law allows for any child of a Colombian mother or father to acquire nationality. Case justification Being interested in how states adapt their citizenship and immigration regimes when facing large-scale international displacement, we chose one of the largest human displacement scenarios, that from Venezuela, and the largest recipient, Colombia. It is welldocumented that various countries throughout South America adapted their policies ad hoc to provide at least temporary legal status to Venezuelans, albeit with varying levels of coverage and effectiveness and restrictive backlashes (Freier and Doña-Reveco, 2022). Our analysis goes one step further and unpacks four cases of paper bridges Colombia built to narrow paperwork gaps for displaced Venezuelans. Opening the black box of the state, we respond to calls for a better understanding of the bureaucratic processes behind Latin American migration governance (Acosta & Freier, 2023; Ramírez Gallegos, 2022). It must be pointed out that the adjustments in its citizenship and immigration regimes exclusively targeted Venezuelan nationals. Officially, Colombia justified such selectivity with the forced nature of Venezuelan displacement, their need for protection, and diminished ability to provide required paperwork (Freier & Gómez García, 2022; Selee & Bolter, 2022). The de facto determinants for Colombia’s policy span across both foreign policy concerns of former conservative presidents – denouncing the Venezuelan regime and improving its international standing – and domestic factors such as the costbenefit assessment conducted by bureaucrats (see Palma-Gutiérrez, 2021; FernándezRodríguez, 2024). Documentation can fulfill different and often contradictory objectives (Cook-Martín, 2019; 2024). Targeting exclusively Venezuelans, Colombia’s paper bridges were by default discriminatory toward all other nationalities. While recognizing uneven coverage in policy implementation in practice, we focus our analysis on four paper bridges Colombia built for Venezuelan citizens or children born of Venezuelan parents in its territory; they: (1) introduced a family reunification permit, (2) adopted birthright citizenship, (3) loosened documentation requirements for naturalization, and (4) eased regularization processes. We interpret these policy changes as reactions to large-scale international displacement, with the aim of migrant naturalization and regularization. Intriguingly, despite far-reaching changes (such as birthright nationality), different offices of the Colombian executive – rather than legislative branch – initiated these changes. In addition to gaining prestige on the world stage, the Colombian state sought to create governance through rights whereby initial paper bridges opened the way for further innovation in the same direction. Such state actions led us to conceptualize what we call paperwork gaps, which can be overcome or reduced by paper bridges. In the face of international displacement, other residence countries can evaluate their context-specific scenarios to direct their policies toward narrowing paperwork gaps within their citizenship and immigration regimes. Page 7 of 20