Venezuelan journalist Carlos Subero researched immigration patterns from Venezuela to the US since 1997 and found that it has surged from 2,500 to 10,000 per year. This reverses the trend of the 1950s, when Venezuela received immigrants from Spain, Italy and Portugal.
Subero, who blogs at Carlossubero’s blog, also found that every forty minutes a Venezuelan obtains a US resident visa, and that the majority of Venezuelan immigrants to the US are middle class or upper-middle class. One in every six is in the traditional professions, a real “brain drain” for Venezuela.
As you can see on the graph below, immigration jumped to the 10,000/yr mark on 2005, when Hugo Chávez announced the Salto Adelante, hacia la construcción del Socialismo del Siglo XXI (Leap Forward, towards building 21st Century Socialism) and began expropriating private lands and businesses:
Personal safety, economic reasons, and politics are the top reasons for immigrating to the USA. Subero also found,
- Whole families are immigrating – the parents seek better lives for their children
- Venezuelans are not interested in entering the USA illegally
- 40% of immigrants in 2009 were sponsored by next-of-kin who is an American citizen
- Most seek American citizenship.
Subero’s book, in Spanish, is available through Amazon.
Here’s a brief interview, also in Spanish,
Cross-posted at Fausta’s blog.
