Don't deport Venezuelans. Grant them temporary U.S. visas by Lourdes Gouveia and Rogelio Saenz

I agree that the political crisis in Venezuela with asylum requests soaring from "5,600 in 2015 to nearly 28,000 in 2017," deporting them will only aggravate the situation there and contribute further to hemispheric instability, deepening an already severe humanitarian crisis along the U.S.-Mexico border.

-Angela Valenzuela

Don't deport Venezuelans. Grant them temporary U.S. visas. | Opinion

Deporting Venezuelans will only aggravate the humanitarian crisis the U.S. government says it’s trying to solve. Absent more stable alternative solutions, Temporary Protected Status for Venezuelans makes sense and is urgently needed,. writes the op-ed author. (Wayne K. Roustan / Sun Sentinel)

By Lourdes Gouveia and Rogelio Sáenz| April 30, 2019 | South Florida Sun Sentinal 

The number of Venezuelans coming to the United States to escape the festering political and economic crises in their country is soaring. As Venezuela falls into deeper chaos and the Trump administration steps up its hostility toward immigrants, their future in the U.S. is uncertain.

Today, approximately 11 percent of Venezuelans are living abroad and the United Nations projects that the percentage will continue to rise.

Today, approximately 11 percent of Venezuelans are living abroad and the United Nations projects that the percentage will continue to rise.

The number of Venezuelan arrivals in the U.S. has grown dramatically over the last decade. According to the American Community Survey, the volume of Venezuelan migrants arriving here soared from 4,700 in 2007 to 49,000 in 2017, more than a 10-fold increase and the highest level of growth among all Latino nationality groups.

Life is increasingly dire for Venezuelans in the U.S., a message that we heard repeatedly from many of the Florida-based Venezuelans we have surveyed since 2012.

This is particularly true of the last wave of Venezuelan arrivals, whom we call “precarious migrants.” They left after the 2013 oil crisis and Nicolás Maduro’s ascendance to power. Prior arrivals reported investing substantial sums of money in legal fees hoping to avoid “illegality.” Typically, they’d hop from one status to another, negotiating a complex assortment of visas, all lacking a path to permanent residency. Inevitably, many have fallen into undocumented status. Today, among all visitors entering the U.S. from Latin America, Venezuelans have the highest overstay rates and most lack resources to invest in prolonged legality.

The bulk of these precarious migrants are faced with few options. They either become undocumented immigrants or apply for asylum at the risk of swift deportation if unsuccessful. Asylum requests from Venezuelans soared five-fold from 5,600 in 2015 to nearly 28,000 in 2017. By 2016 Venezuela surpassed China as the country with the most asylum applications.

President Trump has proposed to cap refugee admissions for Venezuelans at 3,000 (about 10 percent of all refugee admissions) for fiscal year 2019 and has bad mouthed asylum seekers as “con jobs.”

The protracted crises forcing Venezuelans to flee to the U.S. are often deemed “too general” to meet the narrow “fear of persecution” threshold required for refugee admission and, thus, at least half of their applications are denied.

Until now, Venezuelans have largely flown under the radar and escaped Trump’s racialized wrath targeting migrants from Muslim and Central American countries. Venezuelans have typically thought of themselves, and been viewed, as White, professional, legal, and self-sufficient migrants. As their presence increases here, that image may no longer shield Venezuelans from the anti-immigrant venom fueling Trump’s restrictionist policies.

Geopolitical considerations also have historically played a major role in U.S. decisions concerning who deserves asylum (think Cubans and Nicaraguan contras versus Salvadorans). Venezuelans were counting on that time-honored bias given Trump’s fierce opposition to the current Venezuelan government and Nation Security Advisor John Bolton summoning the Monroe Doctrine to warn Russia to stay out of Venezuela. Unfortunately, Venezuelans’ timing is poor, as today’s fear of immigrants trumps fear of Putin.

A glimmer of hope opened up recently with renewed calls to offer Venezuelans Temporary Protected Status (TPS). HR 549, the Venezuela Temporary Protected Status Act of 2019, has already cleared the House. However, the bill comes on the heels of Trump’s executive orders to rescind and stop issuing new TPS for everyone. Indeed, the White House has not yet made an official pronouncement of how it plans to deal with a growing backlog of undocumented and asylum-seeking Venezuelans and there is notable right-wing Republican opposition to TPS for Venezuelans.

Even if TPS were to be granted, it is limited to 18 months of temporary protection. Even if the political crisis ended today in Venezuela, it will take years to bring about stabilization and safety.

In the end, deporting Venezuelans will only aggravate the humanitarian crisis the U.S. government says it’s trying to solve. In the absence of more stable alternative solutions, TPS for Venezuelans makes sense and is urgently needed.

Lourdes Gouveia is Professor Emerita of Sociology and was the founding Director of Latino/Latin American Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Rogelio Sáenz is Professor of Demography at the University of Texas at San Antonio.