Venezuela's Exodus: Mass Migration Overwhelms Neighboring Countries

Venezuela's long-dated political and economic crisis is now creating a massive exodus, causing alarm in neighboring countries and evoking comparisons to the flow of Syrians into Western Europe in 2015.

Around 2 million Venezuelans now live outside the country, and in neighboring Colombia, they are arriving at a rate of about 100,000 per month. They are fleeing one of the deepest crises in the Americas in recent history, as the government of Nicolas Maduro has imprisoned his political rivals and cracked down on protesters, while hyperinflation has rendered the currency worthless.  

International media has only in recent weeks started to pay attention to Venezuela's mass migration, but there are already a few angles to the story. 

First, there is a crisis in neighboring countries, notably Colombia, where President Juan Manuel Santos has launched operations to control borders and crack down on illegal immigrants. A great deal of the political pressure in Colombia, Brazil, Chile, or Ecuador comes from xenophobia, as Bloomberg's Ezra Fieser and Matthew Bristow explain, but the lack of an adequate infrastructure to take in the large swaths of migrants also plays a big role. 

At The Washington Post, meanwhile, Anthony Faiola argues that the crisis definitely has some of the dimensions of a refugee crisis. And throws light on ways the large and growing scale of the Venezuelan diaspora is already reshaping cities in the developing world and throughout Latin America.

Finally, international observers' attention should focus on the humanitarian effects of the crisis: At home, Venezuelans face widespread hunger, as inflation and food shortages have led almost 80% of the Venezuelan population to struggle to find food. For those aged between 15 and 29, disillusionment has reached an alarming point, as 53% of them would like to move abroad permanently, The Guardian reports. 

At its present stage, Venezuela is no country for anyone to grow up in.