CUCUTA, Colombia – A massive economic collapse in Venezuela has led to one of the largest mass-migrations in modern history. As its citizens flee the crime, corruption, and despair, many are showing up at the U.S. southern border.
Now a slight change in policy may put the brakes on that long march northward.
Images of the economic destruction in Venezuela are hard to watch – one video shows a young boy eating garbage, captured on camera by a local news team near the Colombian border. Experts say 95% of Venezuela’s population is caught in the grip of this kind of crushing poverty. So it’s no wonder almost 20% of the country’s population have fled.
And on Venezuela’s border with Colombia, thousands more are leaving every day.
“Well, right now in Cucuta things are pretty tough because everything is expensive,” Wendy, a street vendor told CBN News. “It’s almost as bad here now as Venezuela. So people are fleeing to other countries because it’s getting to be too hard here.”
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Anybody who had the resources to leave Venezuela did so a long time ago unless they are somehow connected to the criminal Narco-state that Venezuela has become. But a bridge between Colombia and Venezuela at Cucuta, Colombia is the place where the poorest of the poor leave Venezuela on foot.
They leave carrying everything they can on their back or pulling a suitcase behind them. And where they go from here depends a lot on the policies of the governments of the countries where they want to resettle.
For example:
“We are hearing there’s a possibility that the U.S. is going to give out permits to work, go to school, and such,” Wendy told CBN News. “This is what we’re hearing. That President Biden is going to give us permission to enter as they did here in Colombia.”
“Really, right now the rate has increased at which my fellow Venezuelans are leaving the country,” said Frankie Martinez, a Venezuelan merchant. “The number staying in Colombia has gone down. They’d rather try for other destinations.”
But the road to the U.S. is long, expensive, and fraught with danger. It includes a six-day walk through the forbidding Darien Gap, where perhaps one in ten die in the jungle. That’s led many Venezuelans to take a slightly shorter, and safer option – traveling south to Chile.
It has the highest standard of living in Latin America, where Venezuelans can easily earn more in a day than they can in a month back home. This influx of humanity, however, has local residents up in arms. Chileans recently protested, calling for stricter immigration controls in the city of Iquique.
“People are unhappy. There are many migrants. A lack of control of the borders. But worst of all is the crime that has arrived with the migrants and illegal migration,” noted Sebastián Vega, an Iquique civic leader.
The protests are becoming more frequent, and leave migrants feeling decidedly unwelcome.
“The town of Desaguadero kind of spans this river between Bolivia and Peru and I’m crossing the river right now, illegally I might add, just like thousands and thousands of people are this morning,” CBN News Contributing Correspondent Chuck Holton said. “Many of them are coming from places like Venezuela on their way to Chile, but there are also migrants coming from Bolivia heading north.”
Now even as migrants still trek to Chile, many who have been there for years are heading elsewhere.
“Right now people are much more interested in going to the United States than they are to Chile,” Martinez explained.
This has added to a 14-fold increase in the number of Venezuelans arriving at the U.S. southern border in the past year. And the overwhelmed U.S. State Department is quietly pressuring the Mexican government to help staunch the flow. To that end, Mexican authorities announced a new visa requirement for Venezuelan nationals entering their country after Jan. 21. The move has many Venezuelans frustrated.
“Sure, people at this moment are more afraid to enter Mexico than before because they might lose what they’ve invested in getting there,” Martinez said. “But they know they’d be better off if they can make it to the U.S.”
“Some will keep risking it, but many others don’t want to go because they won’t just lose their own money, but also the money they’ve borrowed for the journey,” he continued. “So this has had a large influence on those who no longer want to emigrate to the U.S., but that won’t change the fact that the center of attraction for us is still the United States.”
So until things improve in Venezuela, these migrants will keep leaving, and having to weigh the risks of heading north or south in search of a better future.
The remainder of this article is available in its entirety at CBN