Chileans Want Out of Venezuela

The Chilean government is sending an Air Force plane to get hundreds of Chileans in Venezuela who want out. They've already rescued Haitians from there. The idea is to get people who do not have the means to leave themselves, though it's unclear how that is defined or checked. I can't get the iconic image of the last people trying to leave Vietnam on a helicopter off the top of a building out of my mind.

Meanwhile, the Venezuelan government is retrieving Venezuelans in Chile, who initially fled but then could not find work or for whatever reason do not want to stay in Chile. We do need to put that in context, because around 177,000 Venezuelans arrived in Chile last year alone and only about 200 want to go back. So that's more of a PR thing (the capitalists lied to you!) than reality. The Venezuelan government has been doing this on and off all year.

If you take a step back, it's just madness. Way back in 1979, sociologist Saskia Sassen, who has published a ton on migration, wrote the following about Venezuela in International Migration Review:

Since 1973 there has been a pronounced increase in the numbers of permanent residents, registered entries of foreigners, naturalizations, and legalizations of undocumented workers. By October 1977, the total number of foreigners in Venezuela with residence permits had reached almost 1.2 million in a total population of 13 million. This figure is quite high considering that, in 1961, after a decade of massive immigration, there were only about half a million such foreigners and that by 1971 their number was only slightly higher. Although the 1960s saw the addition of almost 80,000 foreigners, there was also a loss of 57,800 persons with permanent residence permits. With the exception of 1969, each year of the 1960s recorded a loss of permanent residents. The reversal of this trend toward large increases in the number of permanent and temporary residence permits granted occurred over a rather short period of time, doubling the resident population between 1971 and 1977.

Venezuela was always known as a haven for those being persecuted by dictatorships. But it was also a magnet for immigrants because of economic growth and labor scarcity. For a long time, it was the most desirable location for Latin America. Everything now is literally the exact opposite.