We still have a third of 2019 to go, but Spain has already surpassed it's highest ever record of asylum petitions (which was last year). Ever since the Venezuela crisis began to get seriously worse in 2016, the record has been broken every year, as tens of thousands of Venezuelans flee to Spain from either their home country or neighboring Colombia (which has an open border policy towards Venezuela, and easily grants them citizenship).

It's such a shame to see what is happening to Venezuela... such a rich country in term of resources, completely messed up by street violence and a regime of autocratic kleptocrats. Our latinamerican brothers have always been welcome here, and I'm sure it will continue to be like this even as these numbers keep pushing the limits of what we can handle, but having so many people flee Venezuela certainly won't help their nation's future either... although to be honest, the way things are going I'd also want to get my ass out of there ASAP.

Hope the situation in Venezuela can improve soon, but unfortunately it doesn't seem very likely.

> kleptocrats

This is my new favorite word. Thank you.

excuse me, but germany, france and italy have been taking in over 100k refugees/asylum seekers in every year since 2015, Germany even massively more - and you're telling me that one year with around 33k venezuelans (people who already speak the language of your country, share the same religion and a closely related culture) constitute "numbers pushing the limits" of what you can handle? and afaik, you have laws stating that any form of benefits end after 2 years max, so that you dont even have to worry about anyone of them becoming a permanent burden on your welfare state...

and meanwhile, your prime minister calls Salvini "a disgrace for humanity" for refusing to take in even more migrants from the boats?!


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But I agree about the situation in Venezuela being a damn shame. I would assume that most of the Venezuelans fleeing to Spain want to return home as soon as the situation allows it, that they want to rebuild their home country instead of abandoning it forever. Since those fleeing to Spain probably skew more wealthy/educated, them not returning would be a big blow for a post-Maduro Venezuela.

It's not about the numbers, but rather the numbers in context. Of course Germany might be taking in many more asylum seekers, but you have almost twice as much our population, three times our GDP and less than a fourth of our unemployment.

Also, Latinamerican citizens that have been living in Spain for two years can request Spanish citizenship, so it's easy for them to stay here permanently. In fact, the majority of them do... they integrate pretty well into society, find a job, have children here, etc... and most chose to stay. Although, it also depends on the country... many (but still far from a majority) of Ecuadorians have returned to their country after a few years of accumulating wealth here, due to the improving conditions of their country. On the other hand, almost none of the many Argentinians that fled their country after their massive economic meltdown during the turn of the century have returned. In general, the more uneducated families (controlled by a more dominant man that wants to sit around all day and beat/fuck his wife) tend to return once they have enough money to live more comfortably in their regressive societies where women have fewer rights and a month of Spanish salary gives them food and shelter for a year's time... this leads to many immigrant women here to try to divorce; but it's generally not easy for them to do so, unfortunately.

The positive side of this migration is that it offsets the crap birth rate of our entitled society... the average Spaniard "cant afford" having a child in a country that offers them child support and free health and education; despite a century ago families having 10 kids in societies that were under the constant stress of famine, war and plagues, with slave like working conditions and no minimum wage, welfare or health/education services.

This post was edited by zarkadon on Aug 21 2019 04:55am

Interesting. And yes, I totally see the burden that all of this is placing on your country. Bad job market, expensive housing, and so on. I totally get that.

I'm just pissed that Spain is constantly verbally siding with the pro-migration forces in public while actually taking in veeery few of the Africans/Arabs coming into the EU.

Btw, why is it so difficult for immigrant women to divorce? Would they lose their legal status if they did? Oo

you might want to look into this a bit more. yes, those are certainly important factors, but US foreign policy, waging an outright trade war against venezuela and deliberately destroying their economy, is a major reason for their complete collapse...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/19/germany-likely-to-head-into-recession-bundesbank-warns



Weaker economies in the EU reduces the chance of them allowing no deal which could result in a softened position on Brexit. However, seeing as our own economy is in a similar position, I may be clutching at straws.

Dude,

There is no softer position on Brexit, BJ is spitting populist balls.

BJ: "Back stop must go"
EU: "okey, give us an alternative"

Ball is in your court with again not enough time to create an alternative.

It's time for UK to pay for its arrogance.