Despite all the changes President Donald Trump has already made with his “America First” foreign policy, his administration has yet to define its strategy toward Venezuela. Its policy toward Nicolás Maduro’s regime will depend on the instruments the White House uses—with different pros and cons—as, meanwhile, Maduro has disregarded last year’s election results and is planning on ruling against the will of the voters for another six-year term.
A consistent approach hasn’t yet emerged, judging by divergent measures taken by the administration so far—including meeting in Caracas with Richard Grenell, Trump’s envoy for “special missions,” to secure the release of six Americans imprisoned by the regime, controversial deportations, and the suspension and possible recalibration of the oil license that allows companies like Chevron to operate in the country.
Economic sanctions are certainly one remaining tool when it comes to adding pressure on the regime. But some believe that getting “tough” on Maduro by strengthening sanctions will only worsen the migration crisis at the U.S. southern border, something the Trump administration wants to avoid. After all, 7.9 million citizens, nearly 25% of the population, has left the country since Maduro took power in 2013, the largest exodus ever in Latin America and the largest in the world outside of wars.
The fundamental question on the table for Trump’s administration is seen to boil down on how to deal with a dictatorial regime that survived the “maximum pressure” of Trump 1.0 and, at the same time, contain the evident increase in Venezuelans arriving in the U.S. as undocumented migrants. According to the Migration Policy Institute, the number of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) encounters with Venezuelan migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border rose from 49,000 in fiscal year 2021 to 188,000 in 2022 and to 266,000 in 2023.
What should the U.S. do: confront Maduro once more in another effort to restore democracy, or appease the dictator to reduce the flow of migrants in an effort to fulfill a fundamental campaign promise? How the White House answers this dilemma will set the future path for a key country (and former U.S. ally) in Latin America.
Sanctions and migration
The conventional wisdom regarding sanctions and migration seems compelling at first glance: sanctions would hurt the Venezuelan economy, and the ensuing economic hardship would drive migration. But this view misunderstands why people migrate, especially when the journey is as perilous as that faced by Venezuelans. Migration is not a simple and immediate reaction to economic hardship. Migration is a costly investment that only pays off in the long run and requires substantial resources to carry it out. This only happens when there is a profound conviction that one’s long-term prospects in the homeland are hopeless and unlikely to be reversed, even in the medium term.
In other words, what drives Venezuelans to leave their country is not short-term economic conditions but the collapse of hope—the belief that positive change within their country has become impossible or highly unlikely.
We arrived at this conviction after trying to make sense of a puzzling fact in our empirical research on the link between oil revenues and migration in Venezuela.This seemed important because it is central to whether constraining the flow of dollars to the regime through oil sanctions would increase migration, as the conventional wisdom holds. Our study, which examined monthly migration flows and oil revenues from 2020 to 2024, found the opposite: When Venezuela’s oil revenues rose, migration to the U.S. also increased. This finding directly contradicts the argument that economic sanctions drive migration. Instead, it suggests that when the Maduro regime has more resources at its disposal, more Venezuelans choose to flee.
Why? Because higher oil revenues strengthen the regime’s grip on power. With more petrodollars flowing into state coffers, Maduro can better fund his repressive apparatus by buying loyalty from military leaders and paying off key elites. The message becomes clear for ordinary Venezuelans: With more oil revenue, the dictatorship is less likely to disengage from its power.
The expectations game
In our view, low expectations of regime change are the central driver of the Venezuelan exodus. Paradoxically, given this hopelessness, temporary economic improvements from higher oil revenues make it more affordable for desperate Venezuelans to finance their journey north and leave.
So the trade-off is the opposite of what one might think: Policies that normalize the Venezuelan dictatorship and relax sanctions increase migration by strengthening the dictatorship’s longevity, crushing hopes for democratic change.
Just look at what has happened over the past few years. Oil revenues increased after the Biden administration eased some sanctions in 2023, allowing Chevron to resume operations in Venezuela. The influx of cash helped stabilize the regime—and subsequently, migration flows rose.
The Venezuelan economic collapse and migration crisis were caused by a kleptocratic regime that destroyed the economic and political rights of Venezuelans to concentrate power. It did so, sitting on the largest oil reserves in the world, amid the most significant oil boom and borrowing binge in the nation’s history. The migration crisis is not the result of either back luck or sanctions—it emanates from the conviction that, without regime change, reality will be grim even in the best of economic times.
Without a voice to change the political direction, Venezuelans chose to exit, revealing the relationship between hope and migration. When hope for change evaporates, even temporary economic improvements can accelerate migration by making the journey more affordable and expectations of regime change less likely.
For U.S. policymakers concerned with promoting democratic change in Venezuela and managing migration flows, the message is clear: There is no trade-off between actions in favor of weakening Maduro and migration risks.
Appeasing Maduro will not stem the flow of migrants. Without hope of change, the tide of Venezuelans seeking freedom and opportunity elsewhere will not stop. After hope and democracy are restored, Venezuelans will choose to build their futures at home, not risk everything for an uncertain journey north.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Dany Bahar
Reading Time: 4 minutesBahar is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Migration Program at the Center for Global Development, a Washington DC think tank. He is also a Senior Fellow at Brown University’s Watson Institute and a Visiting Associate Professor of Economics at Brown University’s Economics Department.
Ricardo Hausmann
Reading Time: 4 minutesHausmann is the founder and Director of Harvard’s Growth Lab and the Rafik Hariri Professor of the Practice of International Political Economy at Harvard Kennedy School.
