As Venezuela crumbles, exodus reaches record level

[Bacchus4.0]

https://abcnews.go.com/International/venezuela-crumbles-exodus-reaches-record-level/story?id=57201638

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Hurtado is one of more than half a million Venezuelans who have made their way to Ecuador through Colombia this year alone -- and one of many who plans to continue onward to Peru or Argentina, according to a recent report from the United Nations.

This year, an average of between 2,700 and 3,000 men, women and children were crossing into the country each day. Just in the first week of August, some 30,000 Venezuelans entered Ecuador. That's more than 4,000 a day. About 20 percent of them stay there and the rest venture south.

There's been a 900 percent increase in Venezuelan migrants in South America, up from 89,000 in 2015 to 900,000 in 2017, according to the U.N. This means 10 times more Venezuelans have entered Ecuador this year than North Africans have crossed the Mediterranean Sea to Europe.

"The exodus of Venezuelans from the country is one of Latin America's largest mass-population movements in history," United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees' spokesman William Spindler said. "Many run out of resources to continue their journey, and left destitute are forced to live rough in public parks and resort to begging and other negative coping mechanism[s] in order to meet their daily needs."