Venezuela's Lost Human Capital
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted 1/25/2007
Immigration: Leftists tout Hugo Chavez's trip down the socialist road as "reform" that rights past wrongs. What they never notice is that as property is confiscated and freedoms evaporate, talented Venezuelans are fleeing.
In 2005, over 10,000 Venezuelans sought permanent residence in the U.S., more than twice as many as who sought admission to the U.S. in 1999, when Chavez first took office. Of these, about a tenth were people fleeing political persecution for asylum.
As Chavez confiscates productive farms, sends red-shirted political rabble to take over apartments, shuts down TV stations, restricts government jobs and services to his friends, abandons the capital to crime, boosts Cuba's security presence, puts armed troops on every corner, launches neighborhood spying committees and forces Marxist indoctrination into even private schools, more Venezuelans find they can no longer endure it. They're leaving.
Venezuelan immigration to the U.S. has gone up more than 5,000% since 2000. Canada has seen a similar surge.
The U.S.-Venezuelan community, centered around the Doral neighborhood of Miami and in the "Little Caracas" city of Weston just north of it, numbers at least 40,000 and may be as high as 180,000, the Miami Herald reports. Houston and Calgary also have Venezuelan communities. In New York City, emigrants from the South American nation are opening chic Venezuelan restaurants.
Who's coming? Not farmworkers or day laborers. Sadly for Venezuela, we're getting the cream of the crop. The doctors working in department stores and teachers working in fast food places are among the many coming here who've had some opportunity to develop their skills as professionals and entrepreneurs.
Weston and Doral are full of business startups, beginning with Venezuelans who own bakeries and restaurants and other businesses. Most assimilate here swiftly. Among them also are software developers, advertising account executives, doctors, scientists, classical musicians and lawyers.
Our gain is Venezuela's loss. These newcomers represent the human capital of Venezuela, something that Chavez, grounded in Marxist materialism, can't understand. He views these talented people as political pawns — traitors.
A month ago, Chavez made a speech mocking those who leave, saying that if anyone didn't want to blindly follow his "revolution," he could "just go someplace else. Go to Miami." Plenty did.
Chavez talks a lot about Venezuela being a rich country, and extols its vast oil wealth. But the human capital he is throwing out is far more valuable. It can't easily be replaced, and might never return .
Their skills are badly needed to clean up Venezuela's deteriorating oil fields, rebuild its crumbling cities and create jobs for its legions of poor citizens. Instead, Chavez is tightening the screws on freedom with a slumlord's tactic of making Venezuela as unbearable as possible to encourage those who can leave to do so.
He may think he can get away with this, but history is against him.
Germany, for instance, never recovered its world science leadership after the Holocaust devastated much of its talent base. Austria lost its cultural ferment for the same reason. Southeast Asian economies suffered after they persecuted their ethnic Chinese entrepreneurs. And Cuba, Chavez's ally whose brilliant emigrants have become stellar successes as Americans, itself sits in ruins.
Chavez and the left will falsely tout socialism's fairness and productivity. But right under his nose, growing numbers of educated Venezuelans are fleeing.
Pity. He's throwing away his country's biggest treasure. And, ironically, he's throwing it right into the arms of his biggest enemy — us.
© Investor's Business Daily, Inc. 2000-2007. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction or redistribution is prohibited without prior authorized permission from Investor's Business Daily. For information on reprints, webprints, permissions or back issue orders, go to
www.investors.com/terms/reprints.asp.
http://www.investors.com/editorial/editorialcontent.asp?secid=1501&status=article&id=254621701430577
