The Venezuelans left in limbo by new US immigration plan
By Alex Fitzpatrick
19 April 2018
A small group of Venezuelans living in the United States are facing a new immigration predicament caused by US President Donald Trump’s executive order on immigration last week.
The order calls on the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to create a new pathway to legal residency for millions of undocumented immigrants in the US.
The main component of the order, the so-called “streamlined” guest worker program, is an extension to work-visa programs that have allowed most Venezuelans to become US citizens since the 1980s.
The DHS has also requested that the Department of State begin allowing Venezuelan nationals living in the US with visas to stay in the country.
Last year, more than a million Venezuelans left the country in a record-breaking exodus that displaced a half-million people across the board.
This new order is just the latest in a series of actions by the Trump administration that have sought to undermine the Venezuelan government and the Venezuelan people.
Trump’s decision to pull the US out of the 2015 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and attempt to impose more protectionist trade measures has devastated the Venezuelan state and increased the impoverishment of a massive majority of the population, with the population living on less than $2 a day.
The new move to extend a guest worker program to Venezuelans in the US is a continuation of the efforts of the Trump administration to open the door to mass immigration by bringing in foreign workers.
The order is just one of several measures the Trump administration has sought to circumvent the immigration system by cutting immigration ceilings and loopholes.
The new measure, although the first of its kind, could be the first of a series of actions by the administration that will lead to increased immigration as the administration will have to seek new ways to justify mass immigration.
The orders announced last week by the Trump administration can be traced to a series of decisions by Trump and his advisers to impose economic sanctions and limit human rights by bringing the US and its “allies” into conflict with Venezuela’s government and