Socialist Policies Spur Venezuelans to Leave

WASHINGTON — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and his dream of "21st Century socialism" have spurred thousands to leave the South American nation, slowly creating a middle- and upper-class diaspora in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere.

Unlike most migration patterns in the Americas, departing Venezuelans are not motivated primarily by current economic frustration. Instead, they are fleeing government policies that they fear could threaten private property ownership, restrict economic opportunities, lead to job losses and provoke regional conflicts, according to analysts, polls and interviews with people leaving.

Manuel Corao, who runs a newspaper serving the Venezuelan community in Miami, estimates that about three Venezuelans a day arrive in the Miami area with the intention to stay.

"They fear the Chavez government, they fear communism and the dictatorship. It's terrible," said Corao, who arrived from Venezuela 11 years ago and stayed because of the situation in his home country.

According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the number of green cards — or permanent legal resident visas — given to Venezuelans in the United States have more than doubled during this decade. In 2006, 11,341 were issued to Venezuelan citizens, up from 4,693 in 2000, the year after Chavez came to power.

Thousands more Venezuelans are in the United States on business, tourist and student visas and others are in the country illegally, experts say. The Pew Hispanic Center, a non-partisan research group in Washington, estimates that 157,977 people who were born in Venezuela lived in the United States in 2006, including naturalized American citizens.

"It's not purely a matter of getting better incomes for your work in foreign countries, but an expectation problem," said Ricardo Villasmil, a professor of economic development at the Universidad Catolica Andres Bello in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital. "They're hoping for happiness as a whole, peace, liberties and safety."

The Venezuelan Embassy in Washington declined several requests for an interview.

In Caracas, 32-year-old Alejandra Gonzalez, said she was leaving Venezuela because she feared the future for her 2-year-old daughter.

"We have a house, jobs, cars here, but we don't have what we need, that is peace and opportunities," she said. "I don't know if my apartment will be taken away from me in the future or not. There is legal insecurity here."

Gonzalez, an economist married to an electrical engineer, said she applied for visas to the United States for her family and won them in the annual visa lottery, which awards visas to people in underrepresented countries.

She is planning to move to Los Angeles, where she has relatives.

"I'm paying a very high price to leave. I'm leaving my parents, my sisters, my family and a good position in my job. I have to leave all this to start from scratch," she said.

Others are departing to Canada, Spain, Australia, Panama, Portugal and other countries.

Chavez came to power in 1999 and was re-elected in 2000 and 2006. His administration has promoted socialist policies with an emphasis on anti-American rhetoric and is close to the Castro regime in Cuba.

Last year, Chavez nationalized the petroleum, communications and electricity sectors. He has indicated he intends to continue to consolidate and centralize power.

Venezuela's economy is heavily based on oil, which is selling around $107 a barrel, a boon for the country. In addition, imports have nearly tripled over the last 10 years, according to the Venezuelan Central Bank.

But the domestic economy is plagued by high inflation and a shortage of goods, including basic foods. In 2007, inflation was about 22 percent. Over the past year, prices have increased by more than a third on such staples as sugar, rice, black beans, pasta, bread and milk.

Earlier this month, Chavez sent troops to the border with Colombia in a conflict with that nation's president Alvaro Uribe, a U.S. ally. Uribe accused Chavez of working with the guerrilla group known as FARC to try to overthrow the Colombian government.

The issue was calmed during a regional summit, but tensions continue.

Esther Bermudez, director of Mequieroir.com, a Web site that gives Venezuelans information about moving to other countries, said that traffic on the site has jumped 300 percent in 2007 and the first months of this year, compared to 2006. Mequieroir.com receives 45,000 to 60,000 visits a day from people in Venezuela, Bermudez said.

According to information collected from Web site visitors, the most popular city destinations for Venezuelans include Miami, Houston, Madrid, Barcelona, Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary and the Australian cities of Sydney, Adelaide, and Melbourne.

Canadian visas issued to Venezuelans have risen about 34 percent in the past two years. And the number of Venezuelans living in Spain also has swelled dramatically — from about 9,400 in 1999 to about 52,000 in 2006, according to Spanish government statistics quoted by Spanish newspaper El Pais.

In a June 2007 survey by Datanalisis, one of the main pollsters in Venezuela, 35 percent of adults said they were willing to leave the country if they had the chance.

However, Luis Vicente Leon, director of Datanalisis, said that new research to be released within a month shows that the number of people who say they want to leave has decreased.

Veronica Rodriguez, a 34-year-old doctor in Caracas, is not ready to depart her native land, but is getting her papers in order at the Spanish consulate just in case.

"My grandfather was Spanish and my husband's parents are Spanish. I'm arranging my documents in case I have to leave," she said. "I will leave if Chavez remains in power after 2012."

Unlike the exodus from Cuba as Castro came to power four decades ago, Venezuela is undergoing a smaller but steady outflow of people and wealth. Villasmil said that Venezuela has not reached the level of other countries in which violence prompts their citizens to leave and live as refugees elsewhere, but that they are in a "previous stage."

"I hope we don't get to a mass emigration situation," he said.

If the conditions worsen, it is unlikely that the United States would give a special immigration status to Venezuela, said Doris Meissner, who during the Clinton administration was commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, now divided into various agencies in the Department of Homeland Security.

Meissner said that Congress would have to pass a law allowing the change, which would be "impossible right now" because other countries would argue that their needs are more dire.

Currently, only Cuba has a special immigration arrangement that allows every Cuban to receive political asylum once they step on U.S. soil.

Meissner added, however, that the United States could quietly issue more tourist visas or approve more isolated cases of asylum for Venezuelans.

Peter Vietti, a spokesman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, said that the United States is not planning any special immigration deal for Venezuela.

Freelance journalist Sandra La Fuente Portillo contributed to this report from Caracas, Venezuela.