Reports Find Insecurity Is Driving Factor of Venezuela Exodus

A series of reports highlight how rampant crime and insecurity have spurred Venezuelans to leave their home country, a perhaps overlooked driver of migration amid the country's ongoing economic crisis that has left food shelves and medicine cabinets bare. Some 2.5 million Venezuelans are currently living abroad, according to a 2016 study by the International Laboratory of Migration. Ivan De la Vega, the laboratory's director and a professor at the Simón Bolívar University, said that more than half of these Venezuelan migrants had left the country as a direct result of a robbery or an assault, or due to the violent death of a family member, reported El Nacional. More…