A jump in the number of Venezuelans crossing a treacherous jungle linking South and Central America is fuelling expectations of a new wave of migration just as the US holds its presidential election.
In September, weeks after Nicolás Maduro was declared the winner of a presidential vote widely considered to be fraudulent, some 19,800 Venezuelans crossed the hazardous area between Colombia and Panama known as the Darién Gap, a rise of 69 per cent on the previous month.
The increase had been driven by a crackdown on dissent in Venezuela, along with fears of tougher immigration restrictions after the US election between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris next month, experts said, adding that they expected the number to keep rising.
“The uptick in migration appears directly related to Maduro’s brazen election theft and lack of hope that accompanies the idea of his regime remaining in power until 2031,” said Ryan Berg, director of the Americas programme at Washington think-tank CSIS.
Since 2015, almost one quarter of Venezuelans have left the country as the economy has shrunk dramatically and Maduro has increased political repression. Their crossings of the Darién Gap surged after 2021, as criminal groups took over the smuggling route and new Mexican visa requirements eliminated a common shortcut to the US.
The surge was a headache for US President Joe Biden. Mexican authorities reported more than 250,000 detentions of Venezuelans between January and August, and they are now the second-largest group of migrants that cross the US border illegally.
Migration fell in July due to optimism that the election would end 25 years of revolutionary socialism. But those hopes were dashed when Maduro, in power since he succeeded the late Hugo Chávez in 2013, was declared the victor by the government-controlled electoral authority.
The opposition claimed its candidate, Edmundo González, won the election by a margin of two-to-one, publishing thousands of voting tallies online as evidence.
“The situation there, both political and economic, is getting worse . . . which means more people are likely to keep leaving,” said Adam Isacson, a migration expert at the Washington Office on Latin America.
At least 2,000 people have been arrested and 24 killed in protests that broke out following the election, while dozens of activists and journalists have had their passports cancelled.
Nicolás Maduro delivers a speech during a rally in Caracas to celebrate the results of July’s presidential election © Fausto Torrealba/Reuters
The economy, which shrank by three-quarters in the eight years up to 2021 before recovering slightly, is creaking as the gap between the official and black market exchange rates has expanded by more than 20 per cent since the election. Annual inflation hit 46 per cent in September, according to the Venezuelan finance observatory think-tank.
“I would have loved to live in Venezuela my whole life, but that’s not an option now and I don’t know what comes next,” said Alfredo, who fled in August. He crossed into Colombia and is en route to the Darién Gap.
A survey by Venezuelan pollster Poder y Estrategia last month found that 26 per cent of respondents were intending to migrate, with 6 per cent already having made concrete plans to do so.
This does not mean they would appear at the US border soon, analysts said. From the Darién, migrants travel more than 2,000km through several Central American countries and into Mexico.
Mexico’s government has stepped up immigration enforcement this year, and the Biden administration has changed the rules to make it very hard to request asylum without an appointment.
The vast majority of Venezuelans now wait months in Mexico for an appointment, creating a backlog of migrants sleeping on streets, in shelters and low-income housing across the country.
“That differential between new arrivals in Mexico and those who can’t actually leave Mexico is going to keep growing,” Isacson said.
Migrants walk in a ‘caravan’ from Mexico’s southern border town of Tapachula last week © Juan Manuel Blanco/EPA/Shutterstock
The tougher measures might dissuade some, but migrant numbers were expected to rise before and immediately after the US election, said Ariel Ruiz Soto, senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute.
“Smugglers and other bad actors take advantage of the moment to say, ‘this is the time you have to go’,” he said.
The US has pushed for stricter migration enforcement in Mexico and Central America. But its policy on Venezuela has been more erratic.
A year ago the Biden administration — concerned by migrant outflows — hoped to secure democratic reforms from Maduro by allowing temporary sanctions relief on Venezuela’s critical oil sector. But it reimposed them in April after Caracas banned the opposition’s main presidential candidate.
For Karina Sánchez, a 27-year-old manicurist who is saving money in Colombia for the onward journey to the US, the only certainty is that she cannot return to her home country.
“I must make it work because I want a future for me and the two children I left in Venezuela.”
Additional Reporting by Ana Rodríguez Brazón in Caracas. Data visualisation by Keith Fray
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Publish date : 2024-10-26 18:00:00
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