Venezuelan refugee crisis
The ongoing emigration of millions of Venezuelans from their native country is the largest recorded refugee crisis in the Americas.
The refugee crisis followed the Bolivarian Revolution, an attempt by the successive presidents Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro to establish a cultural and political hegemony, which culminated in the crisis in Venezuela. The resulting refugee crisis has been compared to those faced by Cuban exiles, Syrian refugees and those affected by the European migrant crisis. The Bolivarian government has denied any migratory crisis, stating that the United Nations and others are attempting to justify foreign intervention within Venezuela.
Newsweek described the "Bolivarian diaspora" as "a reversal of fortune on a massive scale", where the reversal refers to Venezuela's high immigration rate during the 20th century. Initially, upper class Venezuelans and scholars emigrated during Chávez's presidency, but middle- and lower-class Venezuelans began to leave as conditions worsened in the country. This has caused a brain drain that affects the nation, due to the large number of emigrants who are educated or skilled. According to one survey, a sharp increase in the number of Venezuelans wishing to emigrate was observed between December 2015 and September 2016. By mid-2019, over four million Venezuelans had emigrated since the revolution began in 1999, the vast majority in just the preceding three-and-a-half years.
Estimates had risen to 7.1 million by October 2022, over 20 percent of the country's population, exceeding the refugees from the Syrian civil war to become the most voluminous such crisis in history. The Norwegian Refugee Council, the Brookings Institution and the Organization of American States commissioner for the Venezuelan refugee crisis, David Smolansky, have estimated that the crisis is also one of the most underfunded refugee crisis in modern history.
According to the UNHCR, more than 7.9 million people have emigrated from Venezuela in the years corresponding to Maduro's rise to power and the consolidation of Chavismo. From May to August 2023, 390,000 Venezuelans left their country, driven by despair over challenging living conditions, characterized by low wages, rampant inflation, lack of public services, and political repression. However, R4V suggests that these figures could be even higher, as many migrants without regular status are not included in the count. The organization's calculation method is based on asylum requests and refugee registrations in each country, which might exclude those in irregular situations.
History
During the 20th century, "Venezuela was a haven for immigrants fleeing Old World repression and intolerance" according to Newsweek. Emigration began at low rates in 1983 after oil prices collapsed, though the increased rates of emigration, especially the flight of professionals, grew largely following the Bolivarian Revolution which was led by Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez. Andrés Bello Catholic University Economic and Social Research Institute head Anitza Freitez said that emigration became more prominent during Chávez's presidency, attributing "individual development prospects and individual security" as the main reasons.Initial emigration
In 1998, when Chávez was first elected, the number of Venezuelans granted asylum in the United States increased between 1998 and 1999. Chávez's promise to allocate more funds to the impoverished caused concern among wealthy and middle-class Venezuelans, triggering the first wave of emigrants fleeing the Bolivarian government.Additional waves of emigration occurred following the 2002 Venezuelan coup d'état attempt and after Chávez's re-election in 2006. In 2009, it was estimated that more than one million Venezuelans had emigrated in the ten years since Hugo Chávez became president. According to the Central University of Venezuela, an estimated 1.5 million Venezuelans emigrated between 1999 and 2014.
Crisis in Venezuela
Academics and business leaders have said that emigration from Venezuela increased significantly during the final years of Chávez's presidency and during the presidency of Nicolás Maduro. Over time, emigration increased dramatically during the crisis and began to include lower-income Venezuelans, the people whom Chávez promised to aid and who were experiencing hunger in the country's economic crisis. Venezuelan men initially left their wives, children and elderly relatives behind as they fled the country to find work in order to send money back home, sometimes risking their lives walking the Darien Gap. Mothers and children would later leave Venezuela to find their families as they grew exacerbated with the crisis as remittances could not sustain their daily needs.Election of Maduro and 2014 protests
After the election of Maduro in 2013 and as protests intensified in 2014, the emigration rate from Venezuela grew. The Associated Press reported that the Venezuelan middle-class began to emigrate at this time as the crisis intensified with more shortages, inflation and unrest.Between 2012 and 2015, the number of Venezuelans who emigrated increased by 2,889 percent. In 2015, PGA Group estimated that a total of about 1.8 million Venezuelans had emigrated. The following year, an estimated 150,000-plus Venezuelans emigrated; scholars studying the diaspora, which The New York Times referred to as an "exodus", reportedly said that this was "the highest in more than a decade".
2017 constitutional crisis and Constituent Assembly elections
During the 2017 constitutional crisis, Colombia prepared for an increase of Venezuelan refugees. According to the Colombian government, more than 100,000 Venezuelans emigrated to Colombia in the first half of 2017. In the run-up to the 2017 Constituent Assembly elections, Colombia granted a Special Permit of Permanent Residence to Venezuelan citizens who entered the country before July 25; over 22,000 Venezuelans applied for permanent residency in Colombia in the program's first 24 hours. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees found that host countries throughout Latin America recorded more than one million Venezuelans settling between 2014 and 2017. The intergovernmental International Organization for Migration had similar figures, with about one million Venezuelans emigrating between 2015 and 2017 in their data; other statistics indicated that the IOM's numbers may have been conservative.2018 re-election of Maduro
After President Maduro's controversial re-election in May 2018, emigration continued; Venezuelans believed that Maduro's policies would not change, and conditions in the country would continue to deteriorate. In September 2018, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees' regional representative officially compared the crisis with the migrant and refugee crisis caused by the Syrian Civil War. The UNHCR and IOM released data in November 2018 showing that the number of refugees fleeing Venezuela since the Bolivarian revolution began in 1999 had risen to 3 million, around 10 percent of the country's population.2019 presidential crisis
Into 2019, president of the National Assembly Juan Guaidó was declared acting president of Venezuela, beginning a presidential crisis. On April 30, 2019, Guaidó attempted to lead a military uprising to remove Maduro from power, with the plan ultimately failing. Emigration increased once more as Venezuelans predicted that they would not see significant changes and due to the blunders by the opposition. As prospects of political change diminished in Venezuela, a July 2019 poll by Venezuelan-pollster Consultares 21 estimated that between 4.7 and 6 million Venezuelans had left the country. By this point, the Venezuelan refugee crisis was considered the second-worst in the world, behind that from the Syrian Civil War. At the end of 2019, Maduro had firmly established himself in power and opposition to him had become discouraged, resulting with critics leaving the country.2024 political crisis
Following the announcement of results of the 28 July 2024 Venezuelan presidential election, a national and international political crisis developed. Concerns about another refugee crisis have emerged since the election; millions of people who expected change from the election are likely to flee to countries that are already strained from accepting large numbers of Venezuelan immigrants. Such a large migration would exacerbate the border crisis in the US and have a "devastating effect" on other countries in Latin America.Following on the repression and crackdown on dissent by the Maduro administration, a Meganálisis poll of 1,007 people from 8 August to 11 August indicated that over 40% of Venezuelans intend to leave the country soon. Meganálisis's results show that 600,000 Venezuelans intend to emigrate by mid-September, and another 930,000 hope to emigrate by December, joining the already 7.7 million in the Venezuelan diaspora.
Causes
El Universal reported that according to the UCV study Venezuelan Community Abroad: A New Method of Exile, by Tomás Páez, Mercedes Vivas and Juan Rafael Pulido, the Bolivarian diaspora has been caused by the "deterioration of both the economy and the social fabric, rampant crime, uncertainty and lack of hope for a change of leadership in the near future". The Wall Street Journal said that many "white-collar Venezuelans have fled the country's high crime rates, soaring inflation and expanding statist controls". Studies of current and former citizens of Venezuela indicated that reasons for leaving the country included lack of freedom, high levels of insecurity and lack of opportunity. Link Consultants director Óscar Hernández said that causes for emigration include economic issues, although insecurity and legal uncertainties are the main reasons.Crime and insecurity
Venezuela's crime rate is a major cause of emigration. According to sociologist Tomás Páez, Venezuelan parents and grandparents encourage young people to leave the country for their own safety.Venezuela deteriorated under Hugo Chávez, with political instability and violence increasing. According to Gareth A. Jones and Dennis Rodgers in their book, Youth Violence in Latin America: Gangs and Juvenile Justice in Perspective, the change of regime that came with Chávez's presidency caused political conflict, which was "marked by a further increase in the number and rate of violent deaths". Roberto Briceño-León agrees, writing that the Bolivarian Revolution attempted to "destroy what previously existed, the status quo of society", with instability increasing as a result; he also believes that the government furthered these social issues by attributing violence and crime to poverty and inequality, and boasting about reducing both as the Venezuelan murder rate increased. The increase in the murder rate following the Chávez presidency has been attributed by experts to the corruption of Venezuelan authorities, poor gun control, and a poor judicial system. The murder rate increased from 25 per 100,000 in 1999 to 82 per 100,000 in 2014.
In 2018, there were an estimated 81.4 deaths per 100,000 people, which makes this the highest rate in Latin America. Based on WHO standards, this makes violence an epidemic in 88% of the municipalities. There are also estimates that claim Venezuela has the highest rates of kidnapping in the region and claims that kidnappings increased over twenty-fold from the beginning of the Chávez presidency to 2011. There has also been a rise in extrajudicial executions in which the government force called Special Action Forces carried out executions under the guise of security operations. More than 7,500 of the 23,000 violent deaths reported in 2018 were caused by resistance to authority. Between January and May 2019 there were 2,100 of such deaths reported.
The murder rate in Venezuela had also decreased significantly between 2017 and 2020. In 2018, Venezuela's murder rate–described as the highest in the world–had begun to decrease to 81.4 per 100,000 people according to the Venezuelan Violence Observatory, with the organization stating that this downward trend was due to the millions of Venezuelans that emigrated from the country at the time. The murder rate declined even further to 60.3 in 2019.