But the good times are likely over. The fraudulent Venezuelan election on Sunday, stolen outright by President Nicolás Maduro, has already sparked popular unrest that could set off a renewed cascade of migrants across the Western Hemisphere.
A survey in early July found that 17 percent of Venezuelans intended to leave the country within six months if Maduro took the presidency. Mapped onto a population of some 25 million adults, that would produce one of the largest bursts of migration in the world: more than 4 million people (in addition to the 7.8 million who have left so far).
The Western Hemisphere is not ready. Immigration may be setting U.S. politics on fire. But countries across Latin America have absorbed the bulk of migrants marching across the region. And they are showing signs of strain. They may find it difficult to keep welcoming migrants who otherwise would carry on toward the United States.
The number of migrants in Latin America and the Caribbean doubled between 2010 and 2022, to 16.3 million — compared with an increase of 6 million in the United States.
Tiny Costa Rica received the third-most new asylum applications in the world in 2022, taking in Nicaraguans fleeing the autocratic regime of Daniel Ortega. Peru’s immigrant footprint reached 5.4 percent of the population in 2022, from less than 0.5 percent in 2010. Chile has received over half a million Venezuelans, about the same number as the United States, which has 17 times its population.
“These are countries with no experience with mass displacement,” said Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute in Washington. “Most have been quite generous. They are giving people a baseline opportunity to start over.”
They are not quite rolling out the red carpet. One study found that forcibly displaced migrants to Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Peru and Chile are more likely to have informal jobs and earn less than native workers. They have higher poverty rates and less access to health care, and live more often in overcrowded housing.
But immigrants to these countries are finding jobs. Displaced migrants have higher employment rates than the native-born. Only in Mexico and Ecuador is the unemployment rate of locals lower. Moreover, host countries have largely opened their schools for children of displaced migrants. In Chile, nearly all 6- to 14-year-old immigrant kids, and around 85 percent of the 15- to 18-year-olds, go to school.
Immigrants are providing a boost to host economies, adding to the labor supply. One study by economists at the International Monetary Fund found that Venezuelan immigration will add 0.1 to 0.25 percentage points to annual economic growth in the largest countries in the region between 2017 and 2030.
Still, the burst of immigration carries costs. The IMF study identified a modest hit to the wages of informal and less educated local workers, as well as an added cost to the budget. These costs may be temporary, but they are contributing to a narrative that casts immigrants as a burden, mooching off welfare and fueling crime.
In Chile, immigration has become a political headache for the government, which has stopped allowing unauthorized immigrants to legalize their status once inside the country. On July 2, Peru repealed the exception that allowed Venezuelans to enter the country using only their national I.D., now requiring a passport with a visa.
Colombia, which has absorbed almost 3 million of the 6.6 million Venezuelan migrants scattered across Latin America and the Caribbean, has done the best job integrating them into its society. In 2021, Colombia offered a 10-year permit for Venezuelans to work and register with its national health, education and social security systems.
But there are signs of discomfort in Bogotá. Half a million Venezuelans lack the permit and live in irregular conditions. And the government closed the program for all those arriving after May. Polls find the share of Colombians who agree the government should offer social services to Venezuelans declined from nearly 60 percent in 2018 to under 40 percent in 2021.
Washington tends to look at Mexico, Colombia and other Latin American countries as part of its border defense. The Biden administration has asked Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to stop migrants on their way and impose visa requirements on people from migrant-sending countries. The United States has agreed to cover Panama’s costs to deport migrants who cross the Darien Gap.
The decline in migrant encounters with the U.S. Border Patrol is due in large part to Mexico playing interference, intercepting them as they make their way north and busing them back toward its southern border. In the first four months of the year, the Mexican government said it had detained almost three times as many undocumented migrants moving through the country as in 2023.
It is unclear, however, whether these defenses will hold against the likely renewed push of migrants from the chaos in Venezuela. It would be smart for Washington to focus on helping its neighbors to the south integrate burgeoning immigrant populations into their economies and societies. If migrants have nowhere else to settle, they will certainly continue on to the United States.
