Venezuelans are fleeing the Chavista Government.
When the Chavista government announced it had gotten more paper supplies to print passports, 400,000 – that’s right, four hundred thousand – Venezuelans immediately applied to get their passports at once.
Venezuela’s population is 25 million. That means about 2% of the entire population was at the government’s door on the first day.
What does that say? It says that People Want Out. And this people exodus is a sure sign of a brutal leftist tyranny about to take root. It never happens any other way than this. People are getting ready to flee.
A. M. Mora y Leon
September 20, 2005
And, in 2003, many Venezuelans were already fleeing when they saw the first signs of a crumbling economy (the Cuban-Venezuelan oil “deal” alone is costing Venezuelans an estimated US$ 1.7 billion in 2005)…
Just as Cubans did after the revolution led by Fidel Castro, 44 years ago, Venezuelans are fleeing to Miami from their homeland, to escape from what President Chavez calls the “Bole Varian Revolution”.
Venezuelans, in increasingly large numbers, have been trying to aptly oust their leader for some two years.
But the former lieutenant-colonial has used a combination of military and constitutional support to stay in power.
Chavez has twice won consecutive elections, and has the support of the Organisation of American States, which has called on the disparate opposition to use only constitutional means to seek the President’s removal.
But in Venezuela, it’s painfully clear that opponents believe they are morally bound to use whatever means it takes to remove a man whom they regard as a dangerous autocrat. They sincerely believe that President Chavez must be removed before he irrevocably changes the state’s structure, to look more like Cuba than any other Latin nation.
Wealthy Venezuelans said they enjoy more freedom than in their native country, where they felt their lives were in danger.
Many of them began to flee after populists elected Hugo Chavez as president of Venezuela.
South Florida is also becoming a safe haven for former foes to the Venezuelan President Chavez:
Immigration court figures show a steady increase in the number of asylum requests by Venezuelans — from 47 in 2000 to 659 in 2003. Some of the recent arrivals are either wanted for crimes in Venezuela or under investigation for allegedly trying to undermine the Chávez government. Some insist that they face persecution back home in retaliation for their peaceful opposition to Chávez.
A poll in 2001 found that more than 30 percent of Venezuela’s 24 million inhabitants would emigrate if they had the opportunity. This figure is reported to be even higher — 51 percent — for those aged 15 to 24. After four more years of Hugo Chavez, one can only imagine what that number would look like today in 2005.