People Fleeing Socialist Venezuela Shocked When Asked for Passports
According to how American leftists talk, socialism is the greatest thing ever invented and all prior failed attempts at creating a socialist Utopia were simply due to it being improperly implemented, and “this time we’ll get it right.”
One of those failed attempts at creating a socialist Utopia is the once-prosperous South American nation of Venzuela, which is now a miserable and impoverished hellhole from which millions of Venezuelans are attempting to flee.
So many Venezuelans are exiting their own country right now that neighboring nations are feeling overwhelmed at the flood of migrants and have begun to implement policies intended to stem the tide, such as requiring passports for entry, according to the U.K. Daily Mail.
Two of those nations are Ecuador and Peru, which don’t share a border with Venezuela but are separated only by the nation of Colombia. through which the Venezuelan migrants are transiting.
Ecuador was the first to announce that Venezuelans would be required to provide an official passport to gain entry into the country, followed shortly by Peru announcing similar requirements. The only problem is, it is exceptionally difficult for Venezuelans to obtain a passport.
Unsurprisingly, Colombia was less than pleased at the new policies implemented by their neighbors — even though they have their own similar but oft-ignored passport requirement — as the fleeing Venezuelans who can’t reach Ecuador or Peru typically end up staying in Colombia.
Incredibly, Ecuadorian authorities estimate that an astounding 4,000-plus Venezuelans attempted to enter the nation every single day in the first few weeks of August, traversing across the main entry point of the Rumichaca International Bridge.
Colombian officials are concerned that the new policy will create a bottleneck at the important bridge and add to the already extensive congestion. “We are immensely worried about the consequences this might present,” stated Colombian Migration Director Christian Krueger.
The United Nations has estimated that at least 2.4 million Venezuelans have fled the socialist hellhole since 2014 in order to escape the tyrannical government, insane hyperinflation of their currency and widespread shortages of food, medicine and all sorts of staple goods … including even the ink and paper required to produce passports.
“The exodus of Venezuelans from the country is one of Latin America’s largest mass-population movements in history,” stated William Spindler, spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, earlier this month.
It has been further estimated that about 1 million of those migrating Venezuelans have passed through or settled in Colombia in search of asylum and jobs in just the past two years alone. Even though Colombia implemented their own passport requirement for Venezuelans earlier this year, it is not strictly enforced and tens of thousands of Venezuelans enter the country illegally through the porous 1,370-mile border the two nations share.
For their part, Peruvian officials maintain that the passport requirement is simply to ensure orderly migration into the country and to weed out “bad apples” that are mixed in with the “decent people” who are just looking for a better life. They estimate that there are upwards of 25,000 Venezuelans poised along Ecuador’s southern border who are preparing to cross into Peru, some of whom intend to proceed further south to Argentina or Chile.
The new passport policy will take effect on August 25, but Colombian official Krueger said it would have little effect on stemming the flow of Venezuelan migrants and suggested all of the neighboring nations work together to deal with the growing crisis.
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Venezuelans have also been fleeing their country toward the south, entering into Brazil through the border town of Pacaraima and causing unrest among the local Brazilian residents, especially after a group of Venezuelan migrants were suspected of beating and stabbing a local store owner, according to Reuters.
That attack prompted the local residents to form an angry mob and chase roughly 1,200 Venezuelans back across the border into their socialist hellhole. The Brazilian government was forced to dispatch additional military troops to the checkpoint to try and calm the tense situation.
If socialism is so great, as American leftists are so quick to assure us, why are so many Venezuelans so desperate to leave their veritable socialist Utopia and risk getting stuck in migrant camps along borders as neighboring nations refuse to allow them in without passports, which they can’t get from their awesome socialist government?
We won’t hold our breath waiting for an answer to that question.
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