“We will see a new migration peak” after election results in Venezuela: analysts

Experts consulted by the Voice of America They coincide with polls indicating that millions of Venezuelans will leave their country after the election results in Venezuela were announced, which, according to the National Electoral Center, gave President Nicolás Maduro the victory with 5,150,092 votes (51.20%) over the opposition leader, Edmundo González Urrutia, with 4,445,978 votes (44.02%).

“Now that Maduro appears to be opting to seek to remain in power through an authoritarian approach, it is very likely that we will see a new peak in migration from Venezuela to the United States in the coming months, most likely with very significant impacts on transit countries such as Colombia, Panama and other parts of Central America,” explained Theodore Kahns, associate director for Colombia and the Andean region at Control Risks.

According to a survey by ORC Consultores, published before the elections, more than 18% of respondents considered leaving Venezuela if the government remains in power. That means that nearly one million people could migrate in the medium term.

Likewise, a survey conducted by Megaanalysis In April, he indicated that at least 44.6% of the population in Venezuela would consider emigrating in this same scenario.

The stages

For Ronal Rodríguez, researcher and spokesperson for the Venezuela Observatory at the Universidad del Rosario in Colombia, the new wave of migration will occur in three dimensions.

The first, the short-term one, refers to the Venezuelan population that traveled to participate in the elections.

“Over the next two weeks, we are going to have people leaving Venezuela who, obviously due to the results, will leave even with some of their children, nephews, with some more companions than the one they came with, basically because they feel that there is no hope and because they had never really considered staying in Venezuela, but rather going to participate,” he explained.

However, Rodriguez said, it should be noted that it is becoming difficult for those who returned or traveled to Venezuela by air to leave due to differences with Panama and the Dominican Republic.

“All flight logic will be suspended in the coming days and the rescheduling that has been necessary due to the mobilizations that have taken place around the [Aeropuerto Internacional] Maiquetía and will create difficulties. Likewise, internal flights from Venezuela are also creating difficulties and obviously this creates greater pressure on the Colombian border area,” said Rodríguez.

A second block refers to young people, “those who do not have access to an educational system,” Rodríguez explained to the VOA.

“The dynamics of education in Venezuela are complex and young people know that they have no chance of accessing an educational offer that would allow them to build a life project” and, in that order of ideas, “given the announcement of six more years of the Bolivarian Revolution, they are going to leave.”

And thirdly, the elderly. For Ronal, Venezuelans do not want to repeat the history of 2018 – when the international community did not recognize the results of the presidential elections, which ended in sanctions and isolation of the Chavista government and a strong crisis within the country – and prefer to get their parents and grandparents out of Venezuela.

“When you have an elderly relative who depends on essential and vital medicines, you prefer to move them before they end up in a difficult situation in Venezuela,” explained the researcher. So, during the next few months, “many Venezuelans who live in Colombia, Peru, Chile, Ecuador and even in the United States, are going to take their elderly relatives out while the situation stabilizes,” he added.

Impact on the region

Venezuela continues to be the country in the region with the largest number of refugees and migrantswhich currently stands at 7.7 million, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency UNHCR. Of this total, 6.6 million are in 17 countries in the region.

A recent UN Agency Global Trends Report indicates that 2.9 million Venezuelans (97%) are in Colombia, 1 million in Peru, 471,400 in Ecuador and 435,800 in Chile. These figures show an increase compared to the 5.4 million registered at the end of 2022.

Kahns He stressed that in the last two years there has been a significant increase in the flow of Venezuelan migrants to the United States, passing through Colombia via the Darien Gap, Panama and Central America.

So far this year, more than 216,000 migrants, most of them Venezuelans, have crossed the Darien jungle. Last year, 2023, the number of people who passed through this route doubled to more than 500,000 people. “The trends so far this year have been similar,” Kahns said.

For the Control Risks spokesperson, it is likely that many of these migrants who are destined for the United States will abandon this objective and stay in the transit countries, which “clearly is a significant challenge for local institutions in these areas,” which must strive to provide public services.

In these regions, it will therefore be difficult for the authorities to “respond to the needs of migrants and, of course, also to guarantee their safety,” he added.

According to experts, this is compounded by the challenges that migrants themselves have to deal with, such as robbery, fraud and extortion by criminal groups, violence, human trafficking and exploitation, among other scourges.

Colombia, the most affected country

For Ronal Rodríguez, the borders of Darién and Norte de Santander are going to experience “complex” situations.

In the Colombian case, “we find ourselves in the worst possible situation. We have lost institutional capacity for the approach and management of migratory phenomena and particularly that of Venezuela.” During the administration of Gustavo Petro, “the institutional capacity that we had with the Border Management and the Colombian Migration itself was lost,” he added.

This “institutional incapacity” could then generate “important migration situations and nodes in the coming weeks, which unfortunately means that the impact will be direct” and, in that order of ideas, Colombia “will be the country most affected in the region by the departure of the Venezuelan population.”

A situation that could be aggravated taking into account the restrictions planned by the Panamanian government, which has already closed some steps.

According to figures from Migración Colombia, 2.8 million Venezuelans are in the country. This immigration authority has said that it has granted more than 500,000 Temporary Protection Permits (PPT), which allows them to access work (subordinate or independent) and join the social security system. However, for some citizens this is not enough.

So far, uncertainty reigns in the streets of different cities in Venezuela. Thousands of protesters have gathered there to demand that the results be defended in favor of the opposition, which has insisted that the ruling party committed fraud and that they have in their possession copies of 84% of the election records that, in their opinion, would certify the victory of the candidate of the Unitary Platform, Edmundo González, with more than eight million votes in his favor.

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