Which international locations host the biggest Venezuelan populations? | US-Venezuela Tensions Information

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About 8 million Venezuelans, or 1 / 4 of the inhabitants, have fled their nation lately. Al Jazeera takes a take a look at the place they dwell now.

After the abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro by the US on January 3, close by international locations that host massive Venezuelan communities, together with Colombia and Peru, have warned of a possible new inflow of refugees if the nation is distabilised.

The Venezuelan diaspora stays one of many largest on the earth with a minimum of 7.9 million individuals dwelling exterior the nation as of early 2026, primarily as a consequence of almost a decade of ongoing political and financial crises.

On this visible explainer, Al Jazeera unpacks the place Venezuelans live overseas, what protections they've and what the skills are for Venezuelans wishing to journey.

Which international locations host probably the most Venezuelans? Venezuelan migration began with a small group of largely professionals leaving the nation after leftist chief Hugo Chavez grew to become president in 1999, promising to alter the previous political system, which was stacked in opposition to the poor and the Indigenous individuals, with greater than half of the inhabitants falling beneath the poverty line.

Throughout one decade of Chavez’s rule, the nation ramped up authorities spending utilizing the income from oil sector. Thousands and thousands of individuals had been lifted from excessive poverty.

In 2013 after the demise of Chavez, Maduro got here to energy and inherited excessive ranges of debt and rising inflation. By 2014 as oil costs plummeted, these challenges escalated into an financial collapse.

The resource-rich nation skilled a deep melancholy and hovering inflation, making the price of dwelling insufferable. This example led lots of of hundreds of individuals to flee overseas, primarily to international locations inside South and Central America in addition to a big quantity migrating to the US.

By June, the Workplace of the United Nations Excessive Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) had tracked almost 8 million refugees and migrants all over the world with 6.7 million (85 %) of them in Latin America and the Caribbean.

(Al Jazeera) The highest host international locations are:

Colombia – 2.8 million Peru – 1.7 million US – 987,600 Brazil – 732,300 Chile – 669,400 Spain – 602,500 Ecuador – 440,400 Argentina – 174,800 Mexico – 106,000 Dominican Republic – 99,700 What protections do Venezuelans have? UNHCR lists Venezuelans underneath a singular class of displaced individuals as a result of ongoing humanitarian disaster of their dwelling nation.

This classification permits them entry to important companies, comparable to authorized help, healthcare and shelter in host nations.

In Colombia, the area’s major host with 2.8 million Venezuelans, the Non permanent Safety Statute supplies a 10-year residency allow. In the US, a brief protected standing for Venezuelans was revoked in late 2025 by the Trump administration, leaving greater than 600,000 Venezuelans unsure about their future and authorized standing to dwell and work there.

The Trump administration additionally deported lots of of Venezuelan immigrants, a few of them to infamous prisons in El Salvador. Rights teams say lots of them had been tortured and sexually abused there.

In accordance with the UN, almost half of the Venezuelans who've left the nation depend on casual, low-paid work, 42 % wrestle to afford sufficient meals and 23 % dwell in overcrowded housing.

US Homeland Safety Secretary Kristi Noem mentioned Venezuelans who beforehand lived within the US underneath momentary protected standing are actually eligible to use for asylum [File: Yuki Iwamura/AP] How sturdy is the Venezuelan passport? Regardless of Venezuela’s unstable political and financial state of affairs, its passport stays one of many stronger journey paperwork on the earth, in line with the 2026 Passport Index .

It presently ranks forty second globally, offering visa-free, visa-on-arrival or e-visa entry to 124 international locations.

Venezuela has a longstanding visa waiver for the Schengen Space, permitting 90 days of visa-free journey to most of Europe. Moreover, Venezuelans could enter and work throughout a lot of South America as a consequence of decades-old regional mobility treaties.