Venezuelan exodus reaches record 6 million people — and will likely soar in 2022

When I heard that dictator Nicolas Maduro’s disastrous regime in Venezuela has already produced 6 million migrants and refugees — twice the number of people who have fled Afghanistan — my first thought was that it couldn’t get much worse. But I was wrong.

The number of Venezuelan refugees and migrants is expected to grow by 1 million people next year, the Organization of American States’ head of Venezuelan refugee affairs David Smolansky told me in an interview recently.

Under current conditions, by the end of next year there will be 7 million Venezuelan migrants, surpassing the numbers of Syrian refugees and becoming the world’s biggest mass exodus in recent times, Smolansky said.

According to the OAS figures, over the past six years, 1.8 million Venezuelan migrants and refugees moved to Colombia; 1.1 million to Peru; 520,000 to the United States; 460,000 to

Chile; 450,000 to Ecuador; 270,000 to Brazil; 230,000 to the Caribbean; 180,000 to Argentina; and, 103,000 to Mexico..

“The Maduro dictatorship has produced more migrants and refugees than the Taliban regime,” Smolansky told me. “The Venezuelan crisis shows that the absence of basic freedoms can produce migrations as big as those of countries at war, or worse.”

There are three major reasons why the number of Venezuelan migrants may keep growing, experts say.

First, the humanitarian crisis is worsening. According to a new study by the Caracas-based Andres Bello Catholic University — the National Survey of Living Conditions 2021 — the poverty rate has risen to a staggering 94.5 percent of the country’s 29 million people.

The minimum wage in Venezuela, plus a food subsidy, totals the equivalent of $2 a month. Yes, you read that correctly — a month.

Fifty percent of working-age Venezuelans are not working, according to the study, based on 14,000 interviews around the country. In most cases, people quit their jobs because it costs them more to pay for public transportation to get to work than staying at home.

Hyperinflation has made Venezuela’s currency almost worthless — $1 is worth more than 4 million Bolivars. A bus ride costs 1 million Bolivars. Maduro has allowed a de facto dollarization, whereby Venezuelans who get family remittances in dollars from their relatives abroad can live fairly well, but they are a small percentage of the population.

The second reason why many experts predict a new wave of refugees is that the current negotiations between the regime and the opposition are unlikely to drive Maduro to allow a political opening that could get the country back on its feet.

In talks taking place in Mexico, the opposition is demanding basic freedoms to participate in local elections in November. But Maduro so far has refused to allow, among other things, an independent electoral tribunal and equal access of opposition candidates to radio and TV networks.

In recent years, Venezuela’s exodus has escalated after every failed attempt to hold free elections, and this time may be no different. Judging from what sources close to the talks tell me, Maduro is unlikely to make any meaningful concessions.

The third reason for a possible increase in migrants is that, as more Latin Americans get COVID-19 vaccines, more countries in the region are expected to relax travel restrictions in 2022. Many Venezuelans are likely to take advantage of that to move to other countries.

It’s time for the world’s democracies to realize that the Venezuelan exodus will not come to an end unless they address its root cause: a brutal dictatorship that, according to the United Nations, has killed more than 7,000 peaceful opposition activists in recent years and whose corruption and ineptness has created the region’s worst humanitarian crisis in recent memory.

Unless countries escalate their pressure on Maduro to allow free elections, restore democracy — and do not legitimize him, as Mexican president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador shamefully did recently when he gave the Venezuelan ruler a red carpet welcome to his country — the Venezuelan exodus will escalate, further straining the resources of countries across the region.

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