By Omar Ham­moud Gal­lego

Venezuela’s dis­put­ed elec­tion re­sults have thrown the coun­try in­to chaos. The au­thor­i­tar­i­an leader of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, was de­clared the win­ner in a con­test­ed vote in Ju­ly and, since then, has used state vi­o­lence to in­hib­it any hint of protest.

The crack­down has led to the deaths of more than 20 peo­ple at the hands of Venezuela’s se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices and pro-gov­ern­ment armed groups known as colec­tivos, while more than 2,400 peo­ple have been thrown in jail. And the op­po­si­tion can­di­date who is wide­ly be­lieved to have won the vote, Ed­mun­do González, has fled to Spain af­ter be­ing threat­ened with ar­rest.

This swift es­ca­la­tion has sparked wide­spread con­cern through­out Latin Amer­i­ca and be­yond. An­oth­er wave of mi­gra­tion may be im­mi­nent, adding to the near­ly 8 mil­lion peo­ple who have al­ready left Venezuela since 2015. Coun­tries across Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, have ex­pressed con­cern that a new surge of dis­placed Venezue­lans might over­whelm pub­lic ser­vices and fu­el po­lit­i­cal ten­sions.

It is pos­si­ble that gov­ern­ments in the re­gion may re­spond by im­pos­ing stricter bor­der con­trols to stem the flow of mi­grants. But past ex­pe­ri­ence shows that this move would both be in­ef­fec­tive and harm­ful.

Venezuela is a na­tion that was once known for its vast oil wealth. How­ev­er, it has en­dured a pro­longed pe­ri­od of eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal in­sta­bil­i­ty. The coun­try’s de­mo­c­ra­t­ic back­slid­ing be­gan un­der for­mer pres­i­dent Hugo Chávez in the ear­ly 2000s, but it wors­ened dra­mat­i­cal­ly af­ter he died in 2013 and Maduro came to pow­er.

Maduro’s rule has been marked by ram­pant in­fla­tion, a 75 per cent re­duc­tion in GDP, and wide­spread po­lit­i­cal re­pres­sion. These con­di­tions have led to one of the largest mi­gra­tions in mod­ern his­to­ry. Near­ly a quar­ter of Venezuela’s pop­u­la­tion have fled their homes, pri­mar­i­ly to oth­er South Amer­i­can coun­tries.

Ini­tial­ly, many Latin Amer­i­can na­tions co­or­di­nat­ed their re­sponse. Gov­ern­ments came to­geth­er in Ecuador to sign the Quito De­c­la­ra­tion in 2018, for ex­am­ple, which com­mit­ted them to en­sur­ing the safe and reg­u­lar mi­gra­tion of Venezue­lan cit­i­zens.

How­ev­er, this co­op­er­a­tive spir­it soon be­gan to un­rav­el. Chile, Ecuador and Pe­ru made it much hard­er for or­di­nary Venezue­lans to en­ter their coun­tries legal­ly by in­tro­duc­ing visa re­stric­tions by the mid­dle of 2019. These re­stric­tions re­placed ear­li­er poli­cies that al­lowed en­try to Ecuador and Pe­ru with just an ID card.

The ef­fec­tive­ness of these re­stric­tions has been the sub­ject of much de­bate. In a re­cent study, I com­pared the ex­pe­ri­ences of coun­tries that in­tro­duced re­stric­tions with those of Ar­genti­na, Brazil and Uruguay, which kept their bor­ders open.

My find­ings sug­gest that re­strict­ing mi­gra­tion in South Amer­i­ca has not pre­vent­ed it. Mi­gra­tion has in­stead been dri­ven un­der­ground, with sig­nif­i­cant costs both for mi­grants and host coun­tries.

The in­tro­duc­tion of visa re­stric­tions led to a 38 per cent in­crease in the num­ber of Venezue­lan mi­grants who crossed bor­ders via unau­tho­rised routes, and a 41 per cent rise in mi­grants with­out a reg­u­lar res­i­den­cy per­mit in their des­ti­na­tion coun­try. The num­ber of Venezue­lan mi­grants who lacked le­gal sta­tus in their host coun­try al­so jumped from less than one-in-five to more than half.

This shift to­wards ir­reg­u­lar­i­ty has had con­se­quences. For ex­am­ple, I found that falling in­to ir­reg­u­lar­i­ty led to a shift in mi­grants’ pri­or­i­ties away from seek­ing em­ploy­ment and to­wards try­ing to reg­u­larise their mi­gra­to­ry sta­tus.

There is al­so no ev­i­dence to sug­gest that mi­grants redi­rect­ed their jour­neys to South Amer­i­can coun­tries with more open poli­cies. In fact, the com­po­si­tion of mi­grants re­mained large­ly un­changed af­ter the in­tro­duc­tion of re­stric­tions.

Lessons from Eu­rope

Be­fore the elec­tion, a poll con­duct­ed by Venezue­lan firm Meganáli­sis in­di­cat­ed that around 40 per cent of Venezue­lans would con­sid­er leav­ing the coun­try if Maduro re­mained in pow­er. This rep­re­sents a po­ten­tial­ly stag­ger­ing in­crease in mi­gra­tion, even if we ac­count for the gap be­tween in­ten­tion and ac­tion.

To avoid ex­ac­er­bat­ing an al­ready crit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion, coun­tries in the re­gion must adopt prag­mat­ic poli­cies that pri­ori­tise safe and reg­u­lar mi­gra­tion. And they should of­fer reg­u­lar sta­tus to mi­grants that al­ready re­side there.

Eu­rope’s re­sponse to the mass dis­place­ment caused by Rus­sia’s in­va­sion of Ukraine of­fers lessons that Latin Amer­i­can gov­ern­ments should not ig­nore.

In 2022, the EU co­or­di­nat­ed ef­forts to al­low Ukrain­ian refugees free and safe move­ment through­out Eu­rope, while al­so guar­an­tee­ing their right to work and res­i­den­cy, as well as ac­cess to health and ed­u­ca­tion­al ser­vices.

De­spite the mas­sive scale of this dis­place­ment, at over 6 mil­lion refugees, there was no wide­ly re­port­ed “Ukrain­ian refugee cri­sis” be­cause of this co­op­er­a­tive ap­proach.

While the refugee sta­tus of Ukraini­ans in Eu­rope is guar­an­teed up to Feb­ru­ary 2026 (and can be ex­tend­ed if the Eu­ro­pean Coun­cil agrees), the sto­ry is quite dif­fer­ent for dis­placed Venezue­lans. De­spite be­ing con­sid­ered refugees by the UN and the laws of most Latin Amer­i­can coun­tries, gov­ern­ments in the re­gion have large­ly de­cid­ed not to recog­nise them as such.

Nev­er­the­less, Latin Amer­i­can gov­ern­ments should pur­sue a strat­e­gy sim­i­lar to the one we have seen in Eu­rope. This must in­clude re­new­ing their com­mit­ment to the prin­ci­ples out­lined in the Quito De­c­la­ra­tion, as well as es­tab­lish­ing com­mon stan­dards across the re­gion for the re­cep­tion of Venezue­lan mi­grants.

These stan­dards should in­clude the pos­si­bil­i­ty of al­low­ing Venezue­lans to cross bor­ders us­ing on­ly their ID cards, as is still the case in Ar­genti­na and Brazil, giv­en how cost­ly pass­ports and oth­er trav­el doc­u­ments are for many Venezue­lans.

Such re­quire­ments would sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duce the like­li­hood of ir­reg­u­lar mi­gra­tion and, to­geth­er with mass reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion pro­grammes, have a pos­i­tive im­pact on the in­te­gra­tion of Venezue­lans in­to their host coun­tries.

As Venezuela con­tin­ues to grap­ple with po­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic col­lapse, the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty – and par­tic­u­lar­ly neigh­bour­ing Latin Amer­i­can na­tions – must be pre­pared for an­oth­er surge of mi­gra­tion.

But the re­sponse should not be to close bor­ders or re­strict ac­cess. Gov­ern­ments must in­stead co­or­di­nate to en­sure safe, reg­u­lar and hu­mane mi­gra­tion routes.

The fu­ture of mil­lions of Venezue­lans, as well as the sta­bil­i­ty of Latin Amer­i­ca, de­pends on the re­gion’s abil­i­ty to man­age this cri­sis ef­fec­tive­ly. (The Con­ver­sa­tion)

Omar Ham­moud Gal­lego is as­sis­tant pro­fes­sor in Pub­lic Pol­i­cy, Durham Uni­ver­si­ty. He has re­ceived fund­ing from the UK Eco­nom­ic and So­cial Re­search Coun­cil to con­duct this re­search.