Venezuela Surpasses Syria as World’s Largest Migrant Crisis

CARACAS, Venezuela – The Interagency Coordination Platform for Refugees and Migrants from Venezuela (R4V) announced on Monday that the number of Venezuelan migrants that have so far fled from their country and its socialist regime had reached 6,805,209 by August 5, more than 20 percent of the nation’s population.

The amount officially puts the Venezuelan migrant crisis ahead of the Syrian migrant crisis as the world’s largest emergency exodus, on par with the ongoing war-fueled migrant crisis in Ukraine.

The R4V platform is a joint effort between the U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to address the Venezuelan migrant crisis in Latin American and the Caribbean. The organization bases this number on data provided by each of the region’s governments, clarifying, “as numerous government sources do not account for Venezuelans without a regular status, the total number of Venezuelans is likely to be higher.”

R4V does not officially have up-to-date data on the number of Venezuelan migrants in every country. In the case of the United States, for example, the number of Venezuelan migrants reported by R4V is based on 2019 data. The majority of the 6.8 million Venezuelan migrants currently reside in Colombia (2.5 million) and Peru (1.3 million).

Unlike the Syrian conflict’s 5.6 million refugees and Ukraine’s 6.8 million refugees following Russia’s invasion, Venezuela’s migrant crisis is not the result of a war nor was it caused by any natural disaster. It entirely originated with the collapse the South American nation under the once-celebrated ideology of “Bolivarian Socialism” spearheaded by late dictator Hugo Chávez and now led by his successor Nicolás Maduro.

The Maduro regime – which both the United Nations and the International Criminal Court (ICC) have accused, citing “reasonable evidence,” of having committed crimes against humanity – has created one of the world’s worst hyperinflation spirals, severe shortages of food and medicine, destroyed the nation’s public utilities and health infrastructure, and has left more than 75 percent of the remaining population living in extreme poverty.

Since 2019, Venezuela faces a presidential crisis following Maduro’s refusal to step down after holding sham elections in 2018, which caused the then-president of the National Assembly, Juan Guaidó to assume the interim presidency of the South American nation. Venezuela’s constitution required the National Assembly to choose an interim president as the sham election constituted what it refers to as a “rupture in the democratic order.”

Guaidó has been unable to exert any kind power within the nation’s borders and Maduro, who controls the military and all branches of government, remains the de facto ruler of the country. Despite Venezuelans having essentially two governments — that no one believes in — neither has done much with regards to the ongoing migrant crisis.

The Venezuelan migrant crisis had been temporarily slowed down since 2020 by the Chinese Coronavirus pandemic and all of the quarantine-related travel and movement restrictions in place. As more countries have begun to reopen their borders and rescinded quarantine mandates, the Venezuelan migrant crisis has resumed in full force.

The Maduro regime, availing itself of the circumstances of the coronavirus pandemic, sought to launder its image and give the impression that the country has improved, calling for the migrants to return via the regime’s Vuelta a la Patria (“Return to the Fatherland”) program, offering free return flights to Venezuelan migrants back to their country.

Maduro’s foreign affairs ministry reported that only 28,521 citizens have returned through the program by April 2022. The Maduro regime continues to enforce severe restrictions on international flights, with the only authorized destinations currently being Panama, Russia, Dominican Republic, México, Turkey, Cuba, Bolivia, Spain, Portugal Iran, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.

As the migrant crisis continues to grow, more and more countries in the region have begun to impose steeper entry restrictions on Venezuelans. Costa Rica is the latest country in the region to begin imposing visa requirements for Venezuelans that seek to enter or transit through its territory.

Mexico, at the request of the Biden Administration, imposed entry visa requirements on Venezuelans beginning January 2022, which, instead of curbing illegal imigration of Venezuelans to the United States, ended up having a complete opposite effect.

As the majority of Venezuelans cannot fulfill the requirements for the corresponding entry visas, many now flee through dangerous and “illegal” roads such as the Darien Gap, where many have not made the trip unscathed nor have lived to tell the tale. It is estimated that approximately nine Venezuelans per hour cross the Darien Gap, with at least 15 Venezuelans reported to have died trying to cross in 2022 alone, along with widespread reports of women and children being victims of rape.

David Smolansky, commissioner of the Organization of American States’ general secretariat for the migrant and refugee crisis, stated on Tuesday that more than 45,000 Venezuelans have crossed the Darien Gap between January and July 2022. Smolansky was the former opposition mayor of the El Hatillo municipality in Caracas until the Maduro regime removed him from office in 2017 for failing to prevent anti-socialism protests in his municipality, forcing him to flee from Venezuela.

While the Maduro regime has not given an official stance on the Venezuelan migrants crossing the Darien Gap, socialist lawmaker Roberto Messuti stated to the Venezuelan state-owned Venezolana de Television on Friday that the situation of the Venezuelan migrants crossing the Darien Gap is “fake.”

“Why has this been happening? Because unfortunately there was a group of Venezuelan compatriots who fell into the trap of disinformation,” Messuti said, “of the inoculation of hate, of despair, and believed the story that they were told by unscrupulous media, who told them that there was no future here, that Venezuela had been lost and that they had to run away.”

Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.