Thread: Rise of Chávez Sends Venezuelans to Florida

Venezuelan immigrants find camaraderie at El Arepazo, a small restaurant in Doral, Fla. /Alex Quesada for The New York Times

By KIRK SEMPLE
Published: January 23, 2008
WESTON, Fla. — In December 2002, Ariel Dunaevschi, then the owner of a furniture business in Caracas, Venezuela, was on vacation in New York with his family when opponents of President Hugo Chávez called a crippling labor strike hoping to bring the government to its knees.

Venezuelans gather at El Arepazo in Doral, Fla. “It’s a way to forget about everything,â€

This is disgusting. I stopped reading it half way through.

The American people just get kicked and thrown around like they're footballs. If it's not one country it's another. At this point it's all of them. They've all learned that the easiest way out is to high tail it to the U.S. ILLEGALLY. Too bad for the American people.

Some general observations on Venezuelan immigration into the U.S so we can avoid jumping to conclusions:

* Generally middle or upper middle class--most with university education, well travelled, multi-lingual

* Extremely displaced in the U.S= in venezuela they are small business owners or professionals (there are the exceptional wealthy individuals of course), members of country clubs, send their kids to the best schools, have acces to the best doctors, enjoy the support of huge extended families. In the U.S, and in the case of this article, they come with $500k-750k and nothing else.

* They come here by necessity (business are being expropiated, assets in vzla depreciating at an alarming rate)--they lead a sweet life at home and dont want to leave

* Venezuela enjoyed an amazing economic bonanza from the 1950s through the early 1980s that spurred the influx of immigration from Italy, Spain and Portugal at first and the rest of latinamerican later. Many vzlans have european citizenship but choose to live in the U.S

* They invest and place their hopes on this country and generally have bring with them the positive externalities of immigration and almost none of the negative---

These are just my observations on the matter. I understand that most here will take the opposite side of this argument--just keep in mind not all immigration is the same.

In venezuela we allowed 4million guerrilla displaced colombians to come into our country throughout the 80ties amd 90ties. 4mm at the time was 25% of our total population.

We had no system to incorporate these immigrants into society and most ended up as low-wage earners (domestic service, street vendors) who reared their kids in the slums of Caracas. Those kids have now grown up to become thugs, drugdealers, kidnappers and killers.

All Illegal Aliens are Illegal Aliens
Venezuelans who overstay their visas or in other ways violate the immigration laws of the US are Illegal Aliens..and the law should be enforced equally against all Illegal Aliens..

LegalVenezuelan - welcome aboard.

Thanks for the info/update.

IMHO... the economic deprivation angle is probably not one that will win many adherents here (after all, there are many poorer nations in the world, and many of those lie in the Western Hemisphere), not to mention, Venezuela still sits atop one of the largest remaining oil resources in the world.

At the same time, the political persecution issue IS a real one and should be be taken seriously. Those people 'forced out' due to political beliefs/action do deserve to have asylum and refugee claims processed accordingly.

I recently lived in South Florida and know many expatriate Venezuelans that were forced to flee from Hugo Chavez. Almost all of them are well educated decent middle-class and wealthy people. They may be one of the very few groups that actually have some claim for political asylum due to fleeing that Tin-Pot Communist Chavez.

Citco is owned by the Venezulean Government and controlled by Hugo Chavez. Its the source of his funding various leftist Anti-American governments including Castro's Cuba.

At least they're bringing billions of dollars into the U.S. instead of sending billions of dollars home. I hope the Venezuelans don't fall into the ethnocentric illegal immigration apologist BS. This new community should denounce illegal immigration while at the same time lobbying for more visas. Like Cubans, Venezuelans have seen the dark side of socialism firsthand and value what we take for granted here in the U.S. more than most immigrants. It's too bad that some of them would rather pay human smugglers/drug cartels thousands of dollars to smuggle them through Mexico than knock on the front door.