Besserer Rayas et al. Comparative Migration Studies (2024) 12:47 An important drawback of the PPT is that it undermined Colombia’s obligations in terms of refugee protection beyond those fleeing personal persecution, e.g., members of the Venezuelan political opposition. Given the applicability of the Cartagena refugee definition, Colombia had the legal obligation to recognize and protect most Venezuelans prima facie as refugees (Freier et al. 2022; Freier & Gómez García 2022). As the PPT did not allow the same individual to pursue more than one legal status, and asylum seekers in Colombia do not have the legal right to work, many renounced their asylum applications. In contrast to international refugee protection, the PPT was constrained due to its temporariness, as well as susceptible to the political inclinations of the executive (see Fernández-Rodríguez, 2024). Discussion: changing citizenship and immigration regimes Analyzing the four paper bridges the Colombian state built in its citizenship and immigration regimes, we find that – despite some serious limitations in time and scope – each entailed adaptation, innovation, or both, to existing laws and procedures. None of the four paper bridges was an inevitable policy outcome, and several faced severe resistance among different state agencies. Interviewees all agreed that migration governance continues to be a politically insulated policy arena in Colombia, to a large extent because it remains based on an executive-led ad hoc set of decrees. This means that it is subject to fewer conflicts or tensions than legislative action but also that it is subordinate to the president’s interests. First, innovation in the area of family reunification occurred after the state recognized large-scale displacement of Colombian citizens and their Venezuelan family members from Venezuela in 2015. In this emergency situation, the Colombian state recognized the “precarious conditions” that families faced as well as the “difficult conditions” to obtain the needed paperwork from Venezuela (Decree 1772, 2015). This then spurred bureaucratic adaptation of reducing the paperwork requirements for the special PEIP permit, and waiving all fees associated with the permit. Second, in the area of naturalization of children born in its territory, Colombia was undertaking a lengthy piecemeal process of consulting with the Venezuelan embassy and consulates whether or not each applicant had Venezuelan nationality. Here, government learning took the form of recognizing the lethargy and inefficiency of this process. Moreover, the state explicitly noted that many Venezuelans faced insurmountable obstacles to complete the procedure. Innovation then occurred by granting Colombian nationality en masse both retroactively and prospectively. Third, government learning occurred through noticing that naturalization of individuals born in Venezuela had poor uptake. Adaptation occurred in 2016 when the Register issued a decree to activate a previously existing procedure that made it easier to present two witnesses to vouch for the applicant, instead of obtaining the previously required apostille on Venezuelan birth certificates. Fourth and finally, government learning again occurred by noticing under-enrollment in PEP and recognizing that Venezuelan passports were extremely costly and cumbersome to obtain. In reaction, in the context of the PPT, Colombia changed regularization procedures through adaptation: they eliminated a key requirement by allowing Venezuelans to regularize without a passport (if they had arrived before January 2021) and by Page 15 of 20