MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Venezuela’s deepening political and economic crisis has provoked a surge of asylum seekers to Mexico this year, government figures show, with applications to stay in Mexico setting a record pace.

Socorro Flores Liera, Mexico's deputy foreign minister for Latin America and the Caribbean, speaks during an interview with Reuters in Mexico City, Mexico August 4, 2017. Picture taken August 4, 2017. REUTERS/Henry Romero

During just the first six months of this year, 1,420 Venezuelans have sought asylum in Mexico, a nearly four-fold jump compared to the 361 total Venezuelan asylum applicants for all of 2016.

No Venezuelans applied for asylum in Mexico in 2014 or 2015.

“It’s not normal for so many Venezuelans to come here,” Socorro Flores, Mexico deputy foreign minister for Latin America and the Caribbean, told Reuters in an interview.

Venezuelans made up 21 percent of total asylum seekers in Mexico during the first half of this year, compared to just 4 percent during the same period in 2016.

About 40 percent of the Venezuelan asylum applicants have received approval, making them eligible for other protections and benefits including the possibility of obtaining a work visa, while the rest are still being processed.

Flores said the ongoing social upheaval in Venezuela is behind the trend.

In the latest twist in the slow-motion crisis, Venezuela’s chief prosecutor was fired on Saturday and ordered to stand trial, less than 24 hours after a newly elected legislative superbody was installed with sweeping powers to strengthen President Nicolas Maduro’s grip on power. [nL1N1KR08Q]

“Venezuela is a divided country, it is a polarized country, and it will require a lot of vision and a lot of international support to sit down and have a dialogue that can find a solution,” said Socorro.

“The region does not want to see a Venezuela plunged into violence and chaos.”

Street protests since April in the South American nation have left more than 120 people dead as rock-throwing protesters have been met by rubber bullets, water cannon and tear gas.

Also on Saturday, South American trade bloc Mercosur indefinitely suspended Venezuela, adding to international pressure on Maduro to dismantle the newly created assembly and restore democracy. [nL1N1KR0B6] </s> MIAMI >> One was a Venezuelan army officer who deserted and joined the opposition. The other, a political activist who says he had to flee after pro-government forces attacked his home. They ended up in the U.S., among thousands of their countrymen seeking asylum in what seemed like an obvious place to do so.

But both men have been turned away, learning a hard lesson about the limits of asylum in the U.S. even for people from a collapsing country whose government the Trump administration has condemned.

Helegner Tijera Moreno, the former army officer, is being held at an immigration detention facility in New Mexico pending a final removal order or a last-minute reprieve after a judge rejected his asylum claim. The other man, Marcos Guada, was repatriated to Venezuela in July but quickly fled to the Dominican Republic.

They are still surprised — and somewhat bitter — that the U.S. rejected their asylum bids.

“I came here because I thought the United States was the principal opponent of the Venezuelan government and because I thought we had a good chance of help,” Tijera, 39, said by phone from the detention center. “Sadly, I was wrong.”

Venezuelans, whose country has grown increasingly authoritarian and lawless amid an economic collapse, now make up the largest group by nationality of people seeking asylum in the United States. But they are increasingly being denied and must either return to their country or join the more than 2 million who have become refugees in other countries.

“I was looking to save my life,” Guada recalls of his decision to leave. “My life was in danger.”

Nearly 28,000 Venezuelan asylum petitions, some for more than one individual, were submitted in 2017 by people making “affirmative” claims that they assert upon or after their arrival in the U.S. It was 50 percent more than a year earlier and five times as many as in 2015. Thousands more have made “defensive” claims to stave off deportation after visas expired or after their initial petitions were rejected.

Asylum claims typically take up to four years, though the Trump administration has been accelerating the process as part of a broader policy of increased immigration enforcement.

Last year, at least 250 Venezuelans were deported, up 36 percent from a year earlier. At least 258 were deported in the first half of this year. Another 265 are detained like Tijera, awaiting deportation. Officials won’t say how many had their asylum claims denied but lawyers and other experts say that it’s the majority.

The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a data research organization at Syracuse University, found that nearly half the Venezuelan asylum applications that have come before immigration judges in the last five years have been denied. In comparison, nearly 90 percent of claims from Haiti and Mexico are denied while less than 20 percent of claims from Syria and about 10 percent from Belarus are denied.

To qualify for asylum, migrants must prove they face an imminent threat upon their return of persecution because of their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group.

“The general violence, the chaos, the economy aren’t enough,” said Juan Carlos Gomez, an immigration lawyer who runs a legal clinic at Florida International University in Miami. “Many Venezuelans apply for political asylum thinking they are coming out of hell and someone is going to protect them but, sadly, that’s not the law.”

Many Venezuelans believe they will be allowed to claim asylum because the U.S. has been such a staunch critic of the government of President Nicolas Maduro and his predecessor, the late Hugo Chavez.

“The American government is two-faced,” Guada said. “They say one thing and do another.”

Advocates for immigrants say asylum seekers misunderstand the system for a reason. “It is a contradiction in the U.S. immigration policy that we often condemn conditions in a foreign country and then deport people to those conditions,” said Royce Murray, policy director at the American Immigration Council.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services won’t comment on individual cases but says it is upholding asylum laws that have been abused.

“The truth is that claims have skyrocketed across the board in recent years because migrants know they can exploit a broken system to enter the U.S., avoid removal, and remain in the country,” said Michael Bars, a spokesman for the agency.

Tijera would seem to have a strong case since he was a lieutenant in the army, and the support of the military is widely seen as key to Maduro being able to stay in power. Two members of the military were arrested this month for their alleged participation in an attempt to assassinate him by drone and Tijera believes he would be imprisoned and tortured if he returns.

He fled the Venezuela in January 2015, crossing the border into Colombia. He sought asylum in Italy but was turned down so he went to Mexico and sought asylum in the U.S. at a border checkpoint in Texas.

“If I were to go back they would put any kind of charge on me. They know I’m a traitor to the country,” he said.

Guada was a businessman back in Venezuela who was active in opposition campaigns in the northern state of Carabobo. He fled Venezuela in 2010, after government supporters attacked his home with rocks and broke down the door, eventually making his way to Laredo, Texas. There he was detained for nearly three months, then released on a $13,000 bond.

His wife had legal residency and his two sons have U.S. citizenship by birth but he still could not convince immigration authorities that he faced imminent danger back home. Eventually he exhausted his appeals and was deported in July.

“I am frustrated,” he said. “I don’t deserve this.”

Tijera was also unable to convince the judge that he faced arrest if he returns home. He was moved recently in the detention center and could be deported at any moment and fears the worst back in Venezuela.

Back in Venezuela this summer, Guada, now 50, wasn’t going to take any chances with an immigration judge back in the U.S. In three days, he boarded a plane and flew to the Dominican Republic, where he is living with his son.

“I was terrified because anyone who speaks against the regime can be silenced,” he said. </s> UN: Venezuelans now file 1 in 5 of all new asylum claims

LIMA, Peru (AP) — When Johan Álvarez was unable to provide more than one meal a day for his young family he knew it was time to leave Venezuela.

With his wife and infant son, the 25-year-old embarked on a lengthy journey by bus through three nations to reach Peru earlier this year.

Now they are among a growing swell of Venezuelans asking to be recognized as refugees.

A United Nations report released Wednesday finds that Venezuelans represent the largest group worldwide filing new asylum claims. Those fleeing the troubled South American nation made more than one in five of all asylum requests in 2018, higher than the number of claims made by people escaping Afghanistan and Syria.

But Venezuela is not in the midst of war and many foreign governments are reluctant to recognize the migrants as refugees.

On a recent overcast day in Peru's capital, Álvarez filed into a line with about a hundred other Venezuelan arrivals filing for asylum, hoping his family's tale of hunger back home would be enough to earn them refugee status.

"It's not a war of arms," he said. "But it is a war of survival."

As Venezuela's crisis drags on, the number fleeing is rising by alarming numbers. The United Nations estimates there are now 4 million Venezuelans living abroad — a quarter of whom have fled since November. The Organization of American States estimates the number could reach 7.5 million by the end of 2020.

The widely used definition of refugee is someone who has fled his or her homeland because of persecution, war or violence. Asylum claimants typically have to show that they cannot return due to a well-founded fear of persecution because of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular group.

But a more encompassing definition in the 1984 Cartagena Declaration includes people fleeing hunger and poverty resulting from the breakdown of rule of law — conditions which a much wider group of Venezuelans are experiencing.

To date, more than 460,000 Venezuelans have sought asylum, including nearly 350,000 in 2018 alone, according to the U.N. A large number of those claims are being filed in Peru, where some 800,000 Venezuelans now reside.

Last year, Peru received 192,500 claims — an astoundingly high number that has created a backlog. Just over 1,000 Venezuelans have gotten their asylum requests approved. Worldwide, only about 21,000 Venezuelans have been recognized as refugees to date.

The U.N. report released Wednesday notes the Venezuela migration crisis has increasingly taken on the "characteristics of a refugee situation" and says it is clear that international protection considerations "are applicable to the majority of Venezuelans." Such protections could spare them from deportation.

"People fleeing Venezuela are doing so in increasingly complex circumstances," said Federico Agusti, the U.N. refugee agency's representative in Peru. "It's not just a humanitarian crisis. The reason they had to leave is because their life was in danger."

David Smolansky, a Venezuela opposition leader who himself escaped in a journey through the jungle of Brazil, is now the coordinator of a migrant working group led by the Washington-based Organization of American States. He has been traveling throughout the Americas encouraging nations to apply the Cartagena Declaration, which was signed by several of the Latin American nations where Venezuelans are now arriving.

"If you give them refugee status, it will guarantee protection," he said. "I think it will create a commitment from the international community to cooperate more."

Accepting a broader definition of who constitutes a refugee is particularly relevant in Colombia, where large numbers of Venezuelans have fled.

Despite taking in an estimated 1.3 million Venezuelans, neighboring Colombia has received just 2,729 asylum claims, according to U.N. data. Many migrants are discouraged from applying because the process can take as long as two or three years. Others have been told only strict cases of political persecution or desertion will be acknowledged.

Gabriel Valles is one of those hoping his seemingly shoo-in case in Venezuela's neighboring country will be accepted.

The 32-year-old systems engineer and opposition activist spent more than two years in a Venezuelan high-security detention center run by the government's feared intelligence agency that is located five levels underground and known as "The Tomb."

There were no windows and the lights were almost always kept on, he recalled.

The only way he could tell if it might be day or night was by the hum of a metro line that ran nearby. If trains were passing by more frequently, he reasoned, it must be daytime.

"I always asked myself if the people who took the Caracas metro had any idea that below them exists a place where people are jailed," he said.

He was transferred to another jail before being released after nearly four years behind bars, and he later applied for asylum in Colombia.

Valles currently has permission to work and live in the country for 90 days. Even though it can be repeatedly renewed, he said companies have been reluctant to hire him, not having any guarantee that he will have legal status for more than three months.

Many of his compatriots are in even more dire straits: Over a third of Venezuelans in Colombia have no legal status, which often forces them to take low-paying and even abusive jobs on the black market.

"Venezuelans in Colombia should be treated as refugees," he said. "For many reasons other than whether or not there is an armed conflict."

Several nations, including Colombia, continue to forcibly remove migrants despite the dangers they might face back home, while other countries are confronting a myriad of additional issues.

The United States has received some 81,800 asylum requests from Venezuelans and President Donald Trump recently said his administration is considering granting legal temporary protective status to thousands of Venezuelans who have fled.

But Niels Frenzen, a law professor and director of the University of South California's immigration clinic, said the TPS push faces an uphill battle because of the political conundrum it creates for Trump and his tough-on-immigration stance.

"You have these opposing political desires, at least in the current U.S. government," he said.

In Peru, the number of asylum applications is soaring partly because it has become easier to make requests. At the border, Venezuelans can submit their documents for refugee status, which is one of the only ways they can enter after the implementation of new requirements that made it impossible to cross without a passport.

For Álvarez, applying for such status was his best option.

He said his wages working at a liquor store in Venezuela only provided his family with enough money to eat once a day in the afternoon. When his newborn son became anemic and malnourished, they decided to flee.

"I felt like my stomach was consuming itself," he said.

A relative living abroad sent him $450 for the lengthy journey to Lima, where he now works at a candle factory. Though he earns just $329 a month, he said his family eats three times a day.

Returning to Venezuela, he said, would be the equivalent of returning to a nation at war.

"The war is with those who sell food, with the hospitals, with the government," he said. "I want refugee status because I'm looking for a future for my son." </s> LIMA, Peru — The number of Venezuelans fleeing the country is accelerating at a “staggering” rate, the United Nations reported Friday, as the South American nation is caught in a political struggle and grinding humanitarian crisis.

The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, said there are now more than 4 million Venezuelans living abroad — and that 1 million have left in the last seven months alone.

“The pace of the outflow from Venezuela has been staggering,” UNHCR said in a statement. “From some 695,000 at the end of 2015, the number of refugees and migrants from Venezuela had skyrocketed to over 4 million by mid-2019.”

Neighboring Colombia is now home to 1.3 million Venezuelans, followed by Peru with 768,000, Chile with 288,000, Ecuador with 263,000, Brazil with 168,000 and Argentina with 130,000. However, almost every country in the region is hosting “a significant number of Venezuelans,” UNHCR said.

Most countries have taken unprecedented steps to help the migrants, including allowing them to enter on expired passports and providing residency and work programs. But that might be changing.

Peru, which has had some of the most welcoming policies toward Venezuelan migrants, announced Thursday that it will begin requiring them to apply for visas at Peruvian embassies in Venezuela or Colombia.

The new requirement comes as dozens of Venezuelans have been expelled from Peru after committing crimes and as President Martin Vizcarra is facing pushback from those worried about what they see as uncontrolled immigration.

Colombia has also complained that the international community isn’t doing enough to help Venezuela’s neighbors handle the influx, which is taxing the region’s health, education and social security systems.

“These alarming figures highlight the urgent need to support host communities in the receiving countries,” said Eduardo Stein, the special representative for Venezuelan refugees and migrants for UNHCR and the International Organization on Migration. “Latin American and Caribbean countries are doing their part to respond to this unprecedented crisis, but they cannot be expected to continue doing it without international help.”

Venezuela has been trapped in an economic and humanitarian crisis for years amid falling oil production, hyperinflation, and widespread corruption and mismanagement. More recently, economic sanctions from Washington and elsewhere are thought to be exacerbating the crisis.

Leader Nicolas Maduro is fighting for his political survival against Juan Guaido, the head of congress whom the United States and more than 50 other countries consider Venezuela’s legitimate president. </s> More than 70 million people were displaced from their homes as of the end of 2018 ― the highest number recorded by the United Nations Refugee Agency, UNHCR.

In a report released Wednesday, the U.N. refugee agency put the number of those who have been uprooted by war, persecution and other factors at 70.8 million ― twice as many as 20 years ago and over 2 million more than in 2017.

The new figure included nearly 26 million refugees, about 41 million people “internally displaced” ― forced to leave their homes but still living within their country’s borders ― and 3.5 million asylum seekers or people awaiting decisions on their application for sanctuary in another country.

“What we are seeing in these figures is further confirmation of a longer-term rising trend in the number of people needing safety from war, conflict and persecution,” U.N. high commissioner for refugees Filippo Grandi said in a news release.

He noted that the “language around refugees and migrants” is “often divisive,” and urged the world’s nations to “redouble our solidarity with the many thousands of innocent people who are forced to flee their homes each day.”

Venezuelans wait to pass immigration control at the Ecuador-Peru border -- late last week. Economic and political turmoil in Venezuela has spurred en exodic from that country -- contributing to the world's overall displacement trend.

Syrians were again the largest population of displaced people, with 13 million people displaced by the country’s years-long war, according to the UNHCR report.

More than 3 million Venezuelans also were displaced as of last year amid the country’s economic and political crisis ― the biggest exodus in the region’s recent history, per UNHCR.

As in previous years, the U.S. received the largest number of asylum applicants of any country in 2018, with more than 250,000 such claims ― about half of which were made by people from Central America and Mexico.

Under the Trump administration’s recent “remain in Mexico” policy, thousands of asylum seekers looking for safety in the U.S. have been forced to wait in Mexico as their claims are processed. Advocates have raised concerns about the dangerous conditions in border cities such as Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez, where more asylum seekers will now have to wait.

“Any human being that claims to be fleeing from war, conflict and persecution certainly has a right to have his or her story heard, and must be allowed to access safe territory and efficient asylum procedures that are fair,” UNHCR spokesperson Christopher Boian told HuffPost, speaking about the broader issue of record numbers of displaced people worldwide.

“If you want to contemplate if this has major implications for the future of humanity, consider that fact,” he said. “This will have repercussions for a long time to come.” </s> Venezuelan diplomats who are loyal to Juan Guaidó are making their efforts to work more closely with U.S. President Donald Trump's administration and Florida lawmakers public.

Guaidó's U.S. ambassador, Carlos Vecchio, sent a letter Saturday to Craig S. Faller, the commander of the U.S. Southern Command, requesting a meeting. The letter published on social media says Vecchio is ready to discuss the U.S. assistance that was offered.

"We welcome the strategic and operational planning so that we may fulfill our constitutional obligation to the Venezuelan people," Vecchio wrote.

Guaidó is asking the U.S. for assistance with his efforts to oust Nicolás Maduro, who still has the support of the Venezuelan military top brass, and to help the Venezuelans who are suffering because of the economic crisis.

U.S. immigration laws have challenged the asylum bids of Venezuelan migrants in South Florida. The United Nations estimates there were at least 70,000 Venezuelan asylum-seekers in the U.S. from 2014 to 2018. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services experienced an 88 percent increase in asylum petitions in 2017.

"There is no reason not to protect Venezuelans that are here," Rep. Donna Shalala told Local 10 News during a news conference Monday. "Even if the Maduro government failed tomorrow, they would still need to be protected here for a period of time."

Shalala and Rep. Debbie Murcarsel-Powell met with Vecchio's senior aide, Gustavo Marcano, to announce they are working together to help keep Venezuelan migrants from being deported from the U.S. through a temporary protected status.

Rep. Darren Soto, a Democrat, introduced the Venezuela TPS Act of 2019 and Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, a Republican, co-sponsored it in January.

Other Florida co-sponsors include Reps. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, Alcee Hastings, Stephanie Murphy, Charlie Crist, Kathy Castor and Ted Deutch. In February, the House Judiciary Committee referred the bill to the subcommittee on immigration and citizenship. </s> Image copyright Reuters Image caption Latin American countries host the vast majority of Venezuelan migrants and refugees

More than four million Venezuelans have fled their country amid an economic and humanitarian crisis, UN agencies say.

The pace of people fleeing has "skyrocketed" since the end of 2015, with around one million leaving in the last seven months alone, they found.

The agencies said countries hosting the migrants and refugees were in "urgent need" of international support.

Venezuela's imploding economy has meant shortages of basic supplies, such as food and medicines, in recent years.

The crisis has deepened this year amid a bitter power struggle between the government and opposition.

The exodus means Venezuelans are now "one of the single largest population groups displaced from their country", the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) and International Organization for Migration (IOM) said in a joint statement on Friday.

The agencies said they calculated the four million figure using data from national immigration authorities and other sources.

They did not give an exact date for when the calculation began, but said some 3.3 million people had fled since the end of 2015.

A UNHCR spokesperson told the BBC that the real figure may be even higher due to the use of unofficial border crossings.

The agencies called for support to be given to countries hosting the Venezuelans.

"Latin American and Caribbean countries are doing their part to respond to this unprecedented crisis but they cannot be expected to continue doing it without international help," said Eduardo Stein, joint UNHCR-IOM special representative for Venezuelan refugees and migrants.

Latin American countries host the vast majority of Venezuelan migrants and refugees. According to UN figures, Colombia hosts the most at 1.3 million, followed by Peru with 768,000.

Countries in Central America and the Caribbean also host significant numbers of Venezuelans.

What's the situation on the ground in Venezuela?

Under the government of Nicolás Maduro, the economy has collapsed and shortages of food and medicines have become widespread.

In parts of the oil-rich country, fuel has become scarce and drivers queue for days at petrol stations. There are also frequent blackouts.

Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption What are the real reasons behind Venezuela’s blackouts?

The government says the shortages are caused by US sanctions. The opposition argues that they are the result of mismanagement and corruption by consecutive socialist governments.

Who is in charge?

Venezuela is engulfed in a political crisis with two rival politicians - Mr Maduro and National Assembly leader Juan Guaidó - claiming to be the country's legitimate leader.

Mr Guaidó declared himself interim president in January, arguing that Mr Maduro's re-election last year had been "illegitimate".

He has since been recognised by more than 50 countries, including Canada, the US and most in Latin America. But Mr Maduro retains the loyalty of most of the military and important allies such as China and Russia.

Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Venezuela crisis: The four countries interested in the presidential battle

On 30 April, Mr Guaidó led a failed attempt to spark a military rebellion against Mr Maduro, which the latter said was part of a US-orchestrated coup.

Since then, close allies of Mr Guaidó have been arrested. While his parliamentary immunity has been lifted, he has so far not been jailed.

Representatives of the two sides have been holding talks in Norway but they ended without agreement last week. </s> Venezuelan migrants wait at an immigration control point on the Ecuador-Peru border, before the end of a special visa program and tightened entry requirements that demand passports, in Tumbes, Peru, June 14, 2019. Peru unexpectedly became the country with the second-highest number of asylum requests globally last year. (AP Photo/Martin Mejia)

LIMA, Peru (AP) — When Johan Álvarez was unable to provide more than one meal a day for his young family he knew it was time to leave Venezuela.

With his wife and infant son, the 25-year-old embarked on a lengthy journey by bus through three nations to reach Peru earlier this year.

Now they are among a growing swell of Venezuelans asking to be recognized as refugees.

A United Nations report released Wednesday finds that Venezuelans represent the largest group worldwide filing new asylum claims. Those fleeing the troubled South American nation made more than one in five of all asylum requests in 2018, higher than the number of claims made by people escaping Afghanistan and Syria.

But Venezuela is not in the midst of war and many foreign governments are reluctant to recognize the migrants as refugees.

On a recent overcast day in Peru’s capital, Álvarez filed into a line with about a hundred other Venezuelan arrivals filing for asylum, hoping his family’s tale of hunger back home would be enough to earn them refugee status.

“It’s not a war of arms,” he said. “But it is a war of survival.”

As Venezuela’s crisis drags on, the number fleeing is rising by alarming numbers. The United Nations estimates there are now 4 million Venezuelans living abroad — a quarter of whom have fled since November. The Organization of American States estimates the number could reach 7.5 million by the end of 2020.

The widely used definition of refugee is someone who has fled his or her homeland because of persecution, war or violence. Asylum claimants typically have to show that they cannot return due to a well-founded fear of persecution because of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular group.

But a more encompassing definition in the 1984 Cartagena Declaration includes people fleeing hunger and poverty resulting from the breakdown of rule of law — conditions which a much wider group of Venezuelans are experiencing.

To date, more than 460,000 Venezuelans have sought asylum, including nearly 350,000 in 2018 alone, according to the U.N. A large number of those claims are being filed in Peru, where some 800,000 Venezuelans now reside.

Last year, Peru received 192,500 claims — an astoundingly high number that has created a backlog. Just over 1,000 Venezuelans have gotten their asylum requests approved. Worldwide, only about 21,000 Venezuelans have been recognized as refugees to date.

The U.N. report released Wednesday notes the Venezuela migration crisis has increasingly taken on the “characteristics of a refugee situation” and says it is clear that international protection considerations “are applicable to the majority of Venezuelans.” Such protections could spare them from deportation.

“People fleeing Venezuela are doing so in increasingly complex circumstances,” said Federico Agusti, the U.N. refugee agency’s representative in Peru. “It’s not just a humanitarian crisis. The reason they had to leave is because their life was in danger.”

David Smolansky, a Venezuela opposition leader who himself escaped in a journey through the jungle of Brazil, is now the coordinator of a migrant working group led by the Washington-based Organization of American States. He has been traveling throughout the Americas encouraging nations to apply the Cartagena Declaration, which was signed by several of the Latin American nations where Venezuelans are now arriving.

“If you give them refugee status, it will guarantee protection,” he said. “I think it will create a commitment from the international community to cooperate more.”

Accepting a broader definition of who constitutes a refugee is particularly relevant in Colombia, where large numbers of Venezuelans have fled.

Despite taking in an estimated 1.3 million Venezuelans, neighboring Colombia has received just 2,729 asylum claims, according to U.N. data. Many migrants are discouraged from applying because the process can take as long as two or three years. Others have been told only strict cases of political persecution or desertion will be acknowledged.

Gabriel Valles is one of those hoping his seemingly shoo-in case in Venezuela’s neighboring country will be accepted.

The 32-year-old systems engineer and opposition activist spent more than two years in a Venezuelan high-security detention center run by the government’s feared intelligence agency that is located five levels underground and known as “The Tomb.”

There were no windows and the lights were almost always kept on, he recalled.

The only way he could tell if it might be day or night was by the hum of a metro line that ran nearby. If trains were passing by more frequently, he reasoned, it must be daytime.

“I always asked myself if the people who took the Caracas metro had any idea that below them exists a place where people are jailed,” he said.

He was transferred to another jail before being released after nearly four years behind bars, and he later applied for asylum in Colombia.

Valles currently has permission to work and live in the country for 90 days. Even though it can be repeatedly renewed, he said companies have been reluctant to hire him, not having any guarantee that he will have legal status for more than three months.

Many of his compatriots are in even more dire straits: Over a third of Venezuelans in Colombia have no legal status, which often forces them to take low-paying and even abusive jobs on the black market.

“Venezuelans in Colombia should be treated as refugees,” he said. “For many reasons other than whether or not there is an armed conflict.”

Several nations, including Colombia, continue to forcibly remove migrants despite the dangers they might face back home, while other countries are confronting a myriad of additional issues.

The United States has received some 81,800 asylum requests from Venezuelans and President Donald Trump recently said his administration is considering granting legal temporary protective status to thousands of Venezuelans who have fled.

But Niels Frenzen, a law professor and director of the University of South California’s immigration clinic, said the TPS push faces an uphill battle because of the political conundrum it creates for Trump and his tough-on-immigration stance.

“You have these opposing political desires, at least in the current U.S. government,” he said.

In Peru, the number of asylum applications is soaring partly because it has become easier to makerequests. At the border, Venezuelans can submit their documents for refugee status, which is one of the only ways they can enter after the implementation of new requirements that made it impossible to cross without a passport.

For Álvarez, applying for such status was his best option.

He said his wages working at a liquor store in Venezuela only provided his family with enough money to eat once a day in the afternoon. When his newborn son became anemic and malnourished, they decided to flee.

“I felt like my stomach was consuming itself,” he said.

A relative living abroad sent him $450 for the lengthy journey to Lima, where he now works at a candle factory. Though he earns just $329 a month, he said his family eats three times a day.

Returning to Venezuela, he said, would be the equivalent of returning to a nation at war.

“The war is with those who sell food, with the hospitals, with the government,” he said. “I want refugee status because I’m looking for a future for my son.” </s> Ah, the joys of socialism. Amidst a growing political and economic crisis, 4 million citizens have now fled Venezuela. According to a new report by the UN Refugee Agency and the International Organization for Migration, the pace at which citizens are leaving the country has been "staggering", rising from 695,000 people in 2015 to over 1 million people since November 2018.

The countries surrounding Venezuela have been forced to put regulatory measures in place to stop the flow of migrants, which will soon be the largest in Latin American history, according to Bloomberg. Should the exodus continue, it could surpass the 6.3 million refugees created by the Syrian civil war.

Over 12 countries met last year to address the flow of migrants that is putting pressure on resources and stoking tensions in the region. A universal policy for dealing with the problem has yet to be enacted and, on Thursday, Peru said it would increase controls later this month by requiring Venezuelans to apply for humanitarian visas before crossing the border.

Colombia remains the primary destination for those leaving Venezuela, and it now hosts 1.3 million people who have fled the country. Peru hosts 768,000; Chile 288,000; Ecuador 263,000; Brazil 168,000 and Argentina 130,000. Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean have also seen an influx of Venezuelan migrants.

Eduardo Stein, the joint UNHCR-IOM Special Representative for Venezuelan refugees and migrants said: “These alarming figures highlight the urgent need to support host communities in the receiving countries. The countries are doing their part to respond to this unprecedented crisis but they cannot be expected to continue doing it without international help.”

Just days ago we reported that Venezuela had defaulted on $750 million in gold-backed swaps with Deutsche Bank. As part of a financing agreement signed in 2016 which we profiled here, Venezuela received a cash loan from Deutsche Bank and put up 20 tons of gold as collateral. The agreement, which was set to expire in 2021, was settled early due to missed interest payments as Venezuela has now effectively run out of foreign reserves.

Additionally, we reported recently how difficult it was to get even $1 worth of Venezuelan Bolivars anywhere in the country: the reason - hyperinflation in the country is alive and well according to the Bloomberg Venezuela Cafe con Leche index. Finally, back in April, we documented the "Zombie Apocalypse" that gas gipped the country in photos of Caracas in darkness. A series of AP photographs entitled As the sun sets, Venezuela’s capital empties presented Caracas as essentially becoming a ghost town after sunset, depicting its infrastructure collapse and lack of services like electricity, water, and public transport.
Socorro Flores Liera, Mexico's deputy foreign minister for Latin America and the Caribbean, speaks during an interview with Reuters in Mexico City, that during the first half of 2017, 1,420 Venezuelans have sought asylum in Mexico, a nearly four-fold jump compared to the 361 total Venezuelan asylum applicants for all of 2016, as the result of Venezuela's deepening political and economic crisis.