In continuation to yesterday's post (link here), I look at the relative share of Venezuelan migrants hosted by receiving countries.
Until 2017, the U.S. hosted more than 40% of Venezuelan migrants.
After the mass exodus of 2018 the migration flows change drastically, with Colombia and Peru absorbing the majority of migrants (~59%), a situation that persists today.
by Low-Car6464
7 Comments
**Data source**: UNHCR Refugee Data Finder (accessed January 2026)
**Tools used**: R (ggplot2, dplyr), RStudio
TheDataDecoded on X (Twitter)
really shows how geographic proximity matters more than anything when crisis hits – people just go to closest stable place they can reach.
Spain has 400k Venezuelans. 3.4% of 7.8M is 265k, so it’s off. Plus, many that come here have Italian or even Spanish nationality so it doesn’t count.
The text on Peru is a little low contrast and difficult to read. But otherwise a fantastic chart
Beautiful graph, keep them coming!
Just a comment for perspective: 8 Million Venezuelan citizens (not including those more that moved illegaly), close to a third of the country, that were dissatisfied enough to leave. This third of the country was not allowed to vote in the last 2024 presidential election. And even without the dissatisfied third, Maduro still lost by a wide margin.
Is it really a ‘burden’ when those countries largely benefitted from Venezuela’s migrants?
[Venezuelan Migrants Add Over USD 10 Billion a Year to Regional Economies](https://www.iom.int/news/venezuelan-migrants-add-over-usd-10-billion-year-regional-economies)
[Venezuelan Immigrants More Valuable For America Than Venezuela’s Oil](https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2026/01/08/venezuelan-immigrants-more-valuable-for-america-than-venezuelas-oil/)
I’m on the move now, so I can’t check myself, but does the source include Curaçao and Aruba in its dataset?
Iirc last time they’ve estimated that about 9% of our (Cur) population consists of Venezuelan refugees since we have such a small population ourselves.