Besserer Rayas et al. Comparative Migration Studies (2024) 12:47 Data We conducted documentary and legal analysis on Colombian laws, resolutions, bylaws, reports, and judicial sentences, triangulating interviews with pro-bono immigration lawyers and former government officials with our reading of legal documents and regulations. We also collected press releases, for instance from various Colombian state agencies, courts, and NGOs, as well as statistical analyses from governmental and nongovernmental sources. To supplement this publicly available data, we also made dozens of public records requests to the Colombian government, specifically to national and local authorities, government agencies, and ministries. Such information includes, for example, details on policies, statistics of program beneficiaries, legal argumentation supporting policies, and detailed budgets assigned to them. The aim of these requests was two-fold: to find missing official information and to triangulate existing data. Combined, these sources ensured we correctly captured each governmental change targeted at displaced Venezuelans. In addition, the analysis and discussion are based on data collection from several field trips to Bogotá between 2020 and 2023; this research was conducted under the framework of a larger project of one of the authors (Besserer Rayas).3 This consisted of not only accessing the requested public records but also informal conversations with immigrants as well as 30 semi-structured in-depth interviews with policymakers, lawyers, and NGO leaders and staff. The aim of the interviews was to gain an understanding of the content and intention of each of our four analyzed policy changes, as well to triangulate data from collected documents. While those directly involved in creating the policies may hold positively biased views toward the development and implementation of these changes, the lawyers and NGOs did not. The interviewed lawyers were selected due to their ongoing involvement in court cases and legal support they offer to immigrants regarding access to human rights and regularization. The NGO leaders and staff – including NGOs that provide legal assistance to migrants and refugees – were selected based on their understanding of changing legal and documentary requirements for Venezuelans in Colombia, including the intricacies of novel and past regulations surrounding nationality and migratory status. Finally, the interviewed policymakers included one former Head of the Border Management Unit (Gerencia de Fronteras) and three former advisors to this unit, one former Director of Migration (Unidad Administrativa Especial Migración Colombia), legal advisors to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Cancilleria), and a legal advisor to the National Registrar (Registraduría Nacional del Estado Civil). All interviews were conducted in Spanish (by Besserer Rayas, a mother-tongue Spanish speaker) and, when interviewees permitted, were recorded and transcribed verbatim. The data were anonymized. All authors are fluent in Spanish and could interpret the data. Colombia’s paper bridges Venezuelans have moved in large numbers to Colombia since 2015, increasingly bringing with them fewer official documents than required to access rights. The Colombian state reacted to the emerging paperwork gaps with both policy adaptation and innovation. 3 The topic of the larger project is un/documentation regimes and immigration governance. One goal of selected interviews was for a report, co-created with Colombian lawyers, used for strategic litigation on a critical case of citizenship and human rights (see Besserer Rayas et al., 2023; Besserer Rayas, 2023). Page 8 of 20