{"id":31493,"date":"2019-02-02T05:24:41","date_gmt":"2019-02-02T05:24:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=31493"},"modified":"2019-02-02T05:24:41","modified_gmt":"2019-02-02T05:24:41","slug":"amid-crisis-venezuelas-lebanese-community-eye-lebanon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=31493","title":{"rendered":"Amid crisis, Venezuela\u2019s Lebanese community eye Lebanon"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nDUBAI: A Venezuelan man sits on the sidewalk of a city in chaos. He clutches a black gym bag, carrying all his possessions, forced to leave his home due to unbearable economic and political crises that have withered the country.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\nA world away, a Lebanese woman withdraws US dollars from her bank every week and tucks them under her bed for fear that the economy, and the currency, will crash. Both countries are suffering dire economic woe, yet more and more Venezuelans are migrating to Lebanon every year.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cWhen people leave Venezuela, they are not thinking: \u2018I\u2019m going back to Lebanon because there is no government.\u2019 They are looking for work,\u201d Amir Richani, a geopolitical analyst with ClipperData, told Arab News.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cThe migration of Venezuelans is due to the economic situation. As long as it does not improve, we will only see more people leaving.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nVenezuela \u2014 sitting on the world\u2019s largest oil reserves \u2014 has suffered economic meltdown under President Nicolas Maduro, marked by hyperinflation and shortages of basic necessities, including food and medicine.<\/p>\n

\nOpposition leader Juan Guaido, who declared himself the interim president last week, argues that Maduro usurped the presidency following elections in May 2018, widely considered to have been fraudulent.<\/p>\n

\nYet despite this turmoil, what could possibly motivate Venezuelans to leave their country for one in as bad a condition as Lebanon?<\/p>\n

\nIt has been nine months since Saad Hariri was tasked with forming a government in Beirut. Lebanon has the third highest debt to GDP ratio in the world, and its economy is in tatters.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\nLast year, the global ratings agency Moody\u2019s gave Lebanon\u2019s economy a \u201clow (+)\u201d grade, due to \u201cthe deterioration in the regional economic and political environment.\u201d This, and the fear of a real estate collapse, have taken the country to the brink.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\nEconomic growth has plummeted. At a solid 9 percent before the Syrian conflict began in 2011, it has hovered around 1.1 percent for the past three years. Public debt stands at $82 billion, equivalent to 150 percent of GDP.<\/p>\n

\n However, the Mediterranean country is still seen as a more stable option than Venezuela, where the value of the minimum wage keeps dropping with daily fluctuations in the price of dollars on the black market.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cAlthough many of them come back to Lebanon as Venezuelans, a big portion of them are still attached to their Lebanese roots,\u201d Richani said. \u201cSo as long as Venezuela is in conflict, we will see a larger number of Lebanese descendants coming back or trying to come back to Lebanon.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\"\"<\/p>\n

\n\u2018It\u2019s sad and it\u2019s frustrating\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

\nVenezuela has long been a country with problems. Its capital, Caracas, is the second most dangerous city in the world, with a murder rate of 111 per 100,000 people. Its inflation rate has reached hyper levels as consumer prices rose 488,865 percent in the 12 months since September 2017, and it is ranked 139th of 140 countries in the world for corruption, according to the World Economic Forum\u2019s 2018 Global Competitiveness Index.<\/p>\n

\nAccording to the UN High Commission for Refugees, about 3 million people have fled Venezuela, with more expected to follow. Roughly 350,000 of Venezuela\u2019s 32 million citizens are of Lebanese descent, while more than 12,000 Venezuelans are registered with the embassy in Beirut.<\/p>\n

\nLebanese-Venezuelan Rodan Imad was one of those who left. Imad fled Venezuela for the US in 2007 before moving to Beirut in 2011, after he and his family were robbed at gunpoint in their home, which was becoming a regular occurance.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cThe sweat and hard work that my parents had put in, in just one night, was completely destroyed, and we just have to accept it,\u201d
he said.<\/p>\n

\nAfter he left for Beirut, Imad studied architecture at the American University, where many other Venezuelans also enrolled. While he was lucky enough to be able to afford the tuition, many others were not.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cI saw how people were coming from Venezuela, they were coming from very rough times, they lost their businesses, they lost all their savings,\u201d Imad said.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cYou see engineers who graduated from Venezuela, engineers and doctors, who come to Lebanon working in low-paying service jobs just to make ends meet. It wouldn\u2019t be the same in Europe, but they don\u2019t have any family elsewhere so have to come to Lebanon because they think they will feel secure. But when they arrive, it\u2019s hell.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nWhile Lebanon is more financially and politically secure than Venezuela, it is still far from ideal. \u201cLebanon is not the land of opportunity. People just had to start again,\u201d Imad said.<\/p>\n

\n\u2018My second home\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\"\"As more Venezuelans of Lebanese descent arrived, a Latin American club at the American University of Beirut was formed to bring all those who had fled closer together and to create a community in their new home.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cWe started out as 40 members who were mostly just Lebanese, but over the years, as more Venezuelans came, we reached higher numbers, with Venezuelans, Chileans and Colombians,\u201d Ihab Richani, co-founder and former president of the club, told Arab News.<\/p>\n

\nApart from organizing Spanish classes and get-togethers, the club also tries to voice its members\u2019 opinions on the conflict in the South American country.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cWe try to, but we don\u2019t have much of a voice here in Lebanon. We\u2019ve reached 200-250 people in a protest, so it\u2019s not a powerful voice, but at least it feels like home when we\u2019re all from Venezuela, and everyone is interested in going back,\u201d Amir, Ihab\u2019s brother, said.<\/p>\n

\nWhile they attend protests against the regime in Caracas, they also attend Lebanese protests. \u201cIt\u2019s our second home, at the end
of the day.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DUBAI: A Venezuelan man sits on the sidewalk of a city in chaos. He clutches a black gym bag, carrying all his possessions, forced to leave his home due to unbearable economic and political crises that have withered the country.\u00a0 A world away, a Lebanese woman withdraws US dollars from her bank every week and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":31494,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31493\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/31494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}