AP: U.S. Border Patrol Encounters Record Number Venezuelans

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

50% : Last week, experts deemed South America the new Chinese coronavirus hotspot, driving Venezuelans to flee from their country, home to the world's largest oil reserves, to the U.S. and to nearby nations, which are also a source of migrants seeking asylum in the United States.
46% : Venezuelan migrants who cross the U.S. border illegally and request asylum, dubbed "pandemic refugees" by AP, enjoy certain privileges compared to other Latin American migrants due to "firmer financial standing, higher education levels and U.S. policies that have failed to remove Maduro but nonetheless made deportation all but impossible," the news outlet reported, adding:
46% : "Many of the nearly 17,306 Venezuelans who have crossed the southern border illegally since January had been living for years in other South American countries, part of an exodus of nearly 6 million Venezuelans since President Nicolás Maduro took power in 2013," AP pointed out.
45% : Rather than avoiding apprehension and subsequent detention, Venezuelans surrender themselves to Border Patrol agents and request asylum.
44% : While new arrivals don't qualify, Venezuelans requesting asylum -- as almost all do -- tend to succeed, partly because the U.S. government corroborates reports of political repression.
33% : While some Venezuelans are escaping persecution by their government for opposing Maduro, the vast majority are fleeing their country's financial woes exacerbated by the Chinese coronavirus pandemic, making them economic migrants ineligible for asylum under the current U.S. law.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.