Venezuela’s Refugees Are an Asset, Not a Problem

Hunger, economic collapse, repression and Covid-19: Venezuelans have seen just about everything over the last year. To millions of them, a safe harbor in another Latin American country was the only exit. The gun battles between security forces and guerrillas which forced at least 3,100 residents in the western state of Apure to flee over the border to Colombia in late March were only the latest example. Yet even such desperate escapes are looking more fraught as a continental backlash builds against the Western Hemisphere’s most castigated diaspora.

An estimated 5.4 million Venezuelans have quit their failing homeland, 85% of them landing in another country in Latin America or the Caribbean. They represent the world’s biggest humanitarian calamity after that of war-torn Syria, but with a fraction of the assistance and attention. Venezuela’s refugee crisis has drawn $1.3 billion in pledges for relief, even as the Syrian refugee crisis has raised $19.9 billion, according to economist Dany Bahar, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. The pandemic has jackknifed one emergency atop another, as regional authorities fighting contagion and crashing economies seal borders and turn back illegal entrants. An estimated 122,000 Venezuelan emigrants have doubled back home from Colombia alone since the novel coronavirus outbreak; those who stick it out abroad confront escalating hostility and scapegoating, sometimes from presumably sympathetic authorities.