The government of Donald Trump displays an active participation in the current stage of the Venezuelan process, increases the sanctions against individualities of the Venezuelan government and against the operations of Petróleos de Venezuela, and urges other countries to do the same, but in their own territory they deny visas and asylum requests – or delays them -to Venezuelan nationals, and deports hundreds of Venezuelan them.
A temporary protection status (TPS) for Venezuelans would be a good response to the plight of these migrants. The Venezuelan American National Bar Association (VENAMBAR), as quoted by Manuel Madrid in The American Prospect, estimates that some 150,000 Venezuelans qualify to be benefited from this status of protection.
Bipartisan bills to legislate this temporary immigration protection for Venezuelans that would be effective for at least 18 months, are now in the hands of U.S. lawmakers. Last December, Democratic Senator Bob Menendez and other Democrats senators introduced the Venezuela Temporary Protected Status and Asylum Assistance Act , along with Republican Senator Marco Rubio. In the House of Representatives, Democratic Congressman Darren Soto, with the support of Democratic representatves Debbie Mucarsel, Debbie Wasserman Shultz and Donna Shalala, as well as Republican Representative Mario Diaz-Balart, introduced another bill in January 2019.
“The situation in Venezuela is unique (…), the situation in Venezuela is caused by the political situation (…). We believe that the Venezuelans need this special temporary status,” said Díaz-Balart himself, as outlined in the Miami Herald.
Senators Bob Menéndez and Marco Rubio agreed in their assessments of the situation of nationals of Venezuelans residing in the US. Menendez. Menéndez said that granting this immigration protection to Venezuelans who qualify for it and who are prevented from returning to their country “is the humanitarian and morally responsible thing to do.” Rubio added that, given the “serious threats to their security and livelihood,” it is clear that these conditions warrant Venezuelans living in the United States will be granted temporary protection status.
Either way, current U.S. immigration legislation allows Donald Trump’s government to approve a TPS for Venezuelans without having to change the law, Leopoldo Martínez recalls in an article in Al Navío reproduced in English by IQ Latino. Martinez is a Venezuelan-American, founder of IQ Latino and a national member of the Democratic Party.
Manuel Madrid adds in his report for The American Prospect that the Department of Homeland Security has the power to designate the countries from which displaced people can receive TPS protection, “if conditions on the ground are too dangerous for those already in the U.S. to return or if the country [of origin] itself is unable to handle the influx of any who would be deported. That designation provides legal status and work permits for those who qualify.”
However, Madrid recalls, the Trump administration has already attempted to remove temporary protection from more than 300,000 people from Haiti, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Sudan, in 2017 and 2018.
For Venezuelans, then, the government of the United States hasn’t offered a welcoming immigration policy. The data makes it very clear:
- Venezuelans have been the most numerous asylum seekers in the United States during the last three years. This growth is exponential. In 2015, 5,603 petitions were made, according to Manuel Madrid’s article; in 2018, petitions exceeded the 26,000.
- The records of the United Nations Refugee Agency show that, between 2014 and June 30, 2018, Venezuelans seeking asylum in the United States made 72,722 applications. That is 17.8% of the 408,561 Venezuelans seeking asylum in more than 17 countries around the world. An Univision investigation reveals there is a backlog of 70,000 of those petitions, no response between 2015 and 2018. It is estimated that this delay affects 200,000 people, because asylum applications include full families.
- According to a statement reported by EFE on Februaty 25th, the Venezuelan Awareness Foundation, 26,032 Venezuelan asylum petitions were made in the United States in 2018 and 2,064 in January 2019 alone. The data come from official sources.
- The Syracuse University statistics on Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) indicate that U.S. courts ruled on deportation orders for 193 Venezuelans, between October 2018 and January 2019. Manuel Madrid cites “government records” to argue that since 2013, the United States has not resettled any Venezuelans as refugees, nor does it has plans to do so in the future.
- Immigration judges have denied virtually “50% of all asylum applications made by Venezuelans over the last five fiscal years,” Madrid reported, citing TRAC data. The Democrat representatives who introduced the TPS bill coincide with these data. “For comparison, asylum applications from Chinese and Syrian nationals had a denial rate of only about 19 percent and 14 percent, respectively,” Madrid points out.
- The number of tourist visas granted by the United States to Venezuelans is also plummeting, as shown in the statistics from the State Department. In 2017, 56,720 visas were approved. In 2018, the number fell to almost half, 28,540. In 2015 and 2016 the approvals had reached the 237,926 and 156,361, respectively.
Venezuelans are now part of that group of the no man’s land migrants of the world, living with expired tourist visas, no documents, denied asylum applications, deportations orders. Many of them are in charge of the relatives they left behind at home. Many of them came to the United States to receive a medical treatment that was denied in their own country, or, furthermore, they need to bring their sick relatives to the U.S. for the same. There are also Dreamers and young university graduates among these Venezuelans who seek job opportunities in the United States.
“The immigration issue is also a humanitarian tragedy,” Martínez writes in his article.
Manuel Madrid believes that the denial of asylum to Venezuelans could increase due to changes in the law made by Trump’s administration. He refers to the reversal of a decision by the previous Obama administration, which allowed asylum to applicants whose security was threatened by non-state actors, such as gangs and street criminals (Central America), and, in the case of Venezuela, paramilitary groups –the so called “collectives”.
Just a week ago, the United Nations Refugee Agency and the International Organization for Migration announced that the number of Venezuelan refugees and migrants worldwide now stands at 3.4 million. Our fellow and grantee Tomás Páez, coordinator of the project The Voice of Venezuelan Diaspora, estimates that up to 4 million Venezuelans live abroad, in 300 cities from 90 countries
The U.S. government has now in its hands the decision to be consistent in the domestic sphere with what they preach in its foreign policy. That is to benefit and protect the Venezuelans who live in its territory. President Trump dedicated his rally in Florida to Venezuela with great enthusiasm, but made no mention of the migratory situation of Venezuelans in the United States.