Resentment Grows Against Venezuelan Migrants Throughout Latin America

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Bloomberg: Venezuelans, Go Home: Xenophobia Haunts Refugees

For decades, the oil-rich citizens of a great nation were stereotyped by their poorer neighbors as haughty. Now comes the payback.

Mr. Saik touched a raw nerve when he released “La Chama.”

Panama’s hit single is about a Venezuelan woman who “fears nothing but immigration officers,” and “was famous in her own country but here does something else” — the something else presumably being prostitution.

Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans fleeing economic collapse are crowding into cities and makeshift camps in Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador and throughout the region, the largest mass emigration in modern Latin American history. The resulting friction mirrors that in nations from the U.S., where immigration pervades the national debate, to Germany, where war refugees have upended politics, to Italy, where an anti-migrant party made stunning gains Sunday.

In Panama, the sympathy that greeted early arrivals from Venezuela, many wealthy professionals, is giving way to fear and resentment of the poor and desperate. It is evinced by outbreaks of nationalistic insults, harassment and even violence. Mr. Saik’s song brought him death threats from aggrieved migrants.

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WNU Editor: I have friends in Guyana, Colombia, and Argentina. They shudder when I tell them that it is going to get worse .... that within a year or two we may witness the departure of a quarter (if not more) of Venezuelans from their country. And who would blame them .... Venezuela has become a failed state .... there is no real future in that country unless you are part of the elite. As for Venezuela's neighbors .... they are about to be witness to a migrant explosion that they are not use to, nor are they equipped.