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What Next | Daily News and Analysis

What Venezuelan Migrants Are Fleeing

What Next | Daily News and Analysis

Slate Podcasts

News, News Commentary, Daily News

4.32.4K Ratings

🗓️ 3 October 2022

⏱️ 26 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Venezuela has lost about a fifth of its population since its economic collapse in 2014. Roughly 6.8 million people have fled the country, creating one of the largest refugee crises in the world. Why does Venezuela’s free-fall continue? And how is the U.S. government responding to increasing numbers of Venezuelan refugees?

Guest: Cindy Arnson, a distinguished fellow at The Wilson Center and former director of its Latin American Program.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

I think that the holidays feel like frozen noses. I love walking with the dog for long periods of time.

0:10.0

Hopefully it's snowing and you've got to wrap up warm. So I think a frozen nose is a sweaty armpit

0:15.0

because your wrapped up so warm but then you're climbing hamps and heath and you get to the top

0:20.0

and you're like, and then you can see the breath but then your nose is still freezing to touch.

0:25.0

Join in every sip with red cups now back at Starbucks.

0:37.0

In the blitz of coverage about those private planes that carry dozens of migrants to Martha's Vineyard last month,

0:43.0

there's this one fact I can't stop thinking about. It's about where these migrants were coming from.

0:49.0

Not Mexico, not Guatemala, but Venezuela. There are seven countries between the United States and Venezuela.

0:58.0

That means that people on those planes were at the end of a very long trip.

1:03.0

Cindy Arnson, the New Wilson Center's Latin America program, she wasn't surprised by who was on this plane.

1:09.0

She says, over the last few years, 20% of Venezuela's population has fled.

1:16.0

Sometimes they're coming directly from Venezuela. Sometimes they're coming from other countries

1:21.0

to which they had migrated to leave Venezuela.

1:29.0

The reality that people need to focus on is that the numbers of people from Venezuela, from Nicaragua, or from Cuba,

1:38.0

all left-wing dictatorships that are opposed, not just by the Biden administration, but by the Republican Party,

1:46.0

by Rhonda Santas himself, the governor of Florida.

1:50.0

Those are the countries that have seen a surge in arrivals at the U.S. border.

1:57.0

Did it strike you? It's kind of ironic.

2:01.0

It's probably something that Governor Santas was not paying a lot of attention to.

2:07.0

To understand why so many people are fleeing Venezuela in particular, just go check out the State Department's website.

2:17.0

The U.S. government explicitly advises against going to Venezuela yourself,

2:22.0

due to rampant crime, civil unrest, poor health infrastructure, and kidnapping, among other things.

...

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