DENVER AND AURORA, Colo. — Sitting around a table of Venezuelan delicacies — like tequeños, arepas and malta soda — immigrants from the South American country are reflecting on how politics may soon affect migration.
“We're looking for change,” said Gustavo Grinsteins, who grew up in Colorado after his parents fled political and economic instability in Venezuela. He helps those still struggling here and there through work with the nonprofit SOS Venezuela Denver.
With presidential elections in Venezuela this weekend, and in the United States in November, “there's at least the hope that something better is coming along,” he said.
Venezuelan voters will soon decide whether to reelect President Nicolas Maduro, who many Venezuelans blame for the crisis that’s beset his 11-year term, or bring in change with the opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia. Similar to how many American voters believe democracy is at stake in our upcoming election, many Venezuelans fear the elections could be tampered with.
“If there's a change, there's definitely going to be an alleviation in the crisis,” Grinsteins said, potentially slowing down migration from the country.
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In the last year, tens of thousands of immigrants have arrived in Denver on buses. Coming from Venezuela, the Central American countries of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras and other places around the world experiencing instability, violence and corruption.
“Not being able to support your family, seeing your kids not being able to have food at night, is something that is demoralizing,” Grinsteins said. “We left because we want a better life. But if the better life exists in our home country, there's not going to be any reason to come to the United States."
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With so much at stake, Grinsteins said “it's important to get involved with politics because that defines the future of a country.” And he sees parallels between Venezuela and the United States.
“We have a country that is very divided,” he said. “We saw with Venezuela, you know, maybe people are not paying attention, and things changed so quickly, and the country went down the wrong route.”
He sees Vice President Kamala Harris who like him is the child of immigrants, as a beacon of hope.
“There's a lot of excitement from young people like me,” he said, calling VP Harris an example that the children of immigrants who came to the United States for a better life can even aspire to “become the president of this great country.”
But immigration is certain to remain a hot button issue as Harris faces off with former President Donald Trump.
Even Rosalba Guerra, who works with SOS Venezuela Denver, said she worries too many immigrants, including some with bad intentions, may be coming to the United States.
"All the countries have to embrace immigrants, but I understand that they have to be controlled," she said. But the vast majority of immigrants coming to the United States want to work hard and benefit the country. She said small businesses like the food truck Venezuelan Flavor show how immigrants can bring something new to the United States.
“It's this very complicated issue,” said Jesse Acevedo, who teaches about politics and migration at the University of Denver.
“The [U.S. southern] border has always been a center point of how people talk about migration in U.S. politics since the early ‘90s,” Acevedo said. “There's this narrow view that migration is just people crossing the border when it actually makes up a tiny, tiny, tiny bit of actual migration.”
Republicans and Democrats alike have for decades shared policies on deterring migration and stopping people from coming across the border.
“Even though people think the Democrats are soft on migration, they've actually been pretty tough,” Acevedo said. “Most of the border wall was built under Clinton and Obama. Obama had high deportation rates.”
Border enforcement is “where both political parties have a lot in common,” Acevedo said. “Where the parties very differ very, very much is immigrants that are already living in the United States.”
For Republicans, “migration creates easy scapegoats,” while for Democrats, it’s about “helping migrants get jobs, helping migrants get services to better integrate into the country.”
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Heading into the November elections, more than half of voters think immigration is a good thing for the United States but also want migration to decrease, according to a recent Gallup poll.
Since Harris was endorsed to take over the Democratic nomination less than a week ago, Trump and other Republicans have been quick to label her a failed “Border Czar.”
Some Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives went as far as condemning Harris in a symbolic resolution passed Thursday.
But Acevedo said the reality is that as Vice President, Harris was narrowly tasked with bringing investments into Central America in the hopes of reducing migration from there.
On a 2021 visit to Guatemala, Harris said, “I want to be clear to folks in this region who are thinking about making that dangerous trek to the United States, do not come. Do not come.”
But Guerra and Grinsteins from SOS Venezuela Denver know that any reductions in migration will depend on making conditions stable so that people can stay in their home countries. As they hold onto hope, they said their group is hosting an event this Sunday, July 28, from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. at Verbena Restaurant in Denver to reflect on the elections.
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