About 6. 8 million Venezuelans have left since an economic crisis erupted in 2014 for the country of about 28 million people. Most went to neighboring countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. More than 2. 4 million are in Colombia.
This mass migration slowed as the pandemic reduced economic opportunities and confused the region and Venezuela’s socialist government followed reforms that slowed the country’s economic downturn and gave the appearance of renewal.
Around 150,000 Venezuelans returned to their home countries at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, according to United Nations estimates, with some host countries reporting a decline in the total number of Venezuelan migrants for the first time in years.
But the march out is in the back.
Often, in small groups, other exhausted people move along one of the world’s? most extensive migratory routes.
Discover their stories???https://t. co/D6tnw5NSnO pic. twitter. com/NLRDj0gw3K
— IOM Resp. Refugees and Migrant Women of Venezuela ?? (@OIM_RRMV) 31 August 2022
At least 753,000 Venezuelans have left their country for someone else in Latin America or the Caribbean since November, according to information from host countries, even as the government of President Nicolas Maduro continues to trumpet economic growth. Colombia, which has not provided updated figures since November, recorded a jump of around 635,000 between that month and August.
Pandemic lockdowns and border closures have also pushed Venezuelans on riskier roads. Mexico recently imposed a visa requirement for Venezuelans, so instead of flying to a country bordering the United States, Venezuelan migrants now walk north through Central America after crossing the Darien Gap, an area without roads. Jungle that stretches on both sides of the Colombia-Panama border, where thieves, swollen rivers, rugged terrain and wildlife are common.
The Panamanian government said 45,000 Venezuelans have entered its territory this year, up from just 3,000 last year.
The lack of diplomatic relations between the U. S. The U. S. and Venezuela means that the U. S. UU. no has been able to deport Venezuelans under the pandemic-era regime at the U. S. -Mexico border. The administration of U. S. President Joe Biden extended Venezuelans’ reputation for transience in the United States until March 8, 2021, protecting another 343,000 people from deportation for another 18 months.
However, the long-term venezuelan asylum seekers in the United States is fraught with pitfalls under pressure from Republican officials who have used the growing number of migrants arriving at the border to attack Biden’s immigration and border security policies.
Arbelys Briceño was on her eighth day of travel from her hometown of Venezuela to Peru, a country the 14-year-old still can’t locate on a map her older brother had set as a destination. Mosquitoes had marked his legs. The sun had burned his face.
“It’s like it’s a vacation but with a lot of walking,” Arbelys said with a much more positive outlook than most Venezuelan immigrants looking to escape poverty in their once-filthy wealthy country.
— María Gabriela Trompetero?? (@GabyTrompetero) August 29, 2022
By the time Arbelys, his sister and brother arrived in Colombia, they had traveled about six hundred kilometers (370 miles). She couldn’t sleep one night, they had stayed on a side sidewalk and the noises surprised her. He slipped and fell twice as they walked along a muddy road that crossed the border.
His brother, traveling through the moment in time, knew how to let the inclement sun crunch his skin and smeared his face with sunscreen, which had formed streaks on his forehead.
Data collected through the Inter-Agency Coordination Platform for Refugees and Migrants, which reaches some two hundred humanitarian organizations, shows that governments have recorded the arrival of 753,000 Venezuelan migrants, refugees and asylum seekers since November in 17 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Knowledge of the platform also shows that the overall population of Venezuelans in those countries declined for some time last year, from 4,620,185 in January to 4,598,355 in July.
The platform’s figures don’t come with all migrants because some countries don’t count those that are illegal and don’t come with figures from other countries, such as the United States.
Outside the Los Patios soup kitchen, about 7. 5 km (4. 5 miles) from colombia’s interior, other people temporarily crowd around a table once the door of the lost mesh fence opens.
Some learned of the operation from friends or other immigrants, whose chefs prepare more than 40 gallons (151 liters) of soup to eat at two sites.
Jhon Alvarez, coordinator of the Nueva Ilusión Foundation — more or less the Nueva Esperanza Foundation — said he sees more and more familiar faces in the soup kitchen.
“People are coming back from other countries — Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia — back to Venezuela, but after 15 days or a month, they can’t do it anymore and they come back,” Alvarez said.
He said he was told, “Look, I had to go back because the scenario is the same [or] it’s worse. They raised the minimum wage, they did, but there is no work.
Today, 48% of migrants surveyed through a network of aid agencies cited lack of employment and low wages as the main explanation for their departure from Venezuela, while 40% cited difficulties in obtaining food and basic services, according to the Venezuelan High UN. United Nations Commissioner High Commissioner for the United Nations. Refugees.