America is getting ready for yet another immigration debate. President Joe Biden and Democrats in Congress shook immigration restrictionists when they introduced their immigration reform bill last month.
Many on the right are raising old concerns about immigration once again — concerns that this bill will mean in “open borders,” that amnesty will result in millions of new Democrat voters and that legal and illegal immigrants alike will take away jobs from Americans, be a burden on taxpayers and fundamentally disrupt American culture.
But what if I told you that the fastest-growing immigrant group in America is bucking that narrative? Would you be able to guess which country they come from? The answer — by a large margin — is my home country, Venezuela.
The reason Venezuelans flee our country is pretty clear to anyone who takes the time to read about it: A 21-year-old socialist regime. Yet, despite the desperate conditions Venezuelans are fleeing and the few years most have lived in the United States, we’re one of the most successful immigrant groups measured by education, employment and family structure. And we aren’t really Democrats, either.
Venezuelans have been escaping our country for a long time now. Of the roughly 30 million people who lived in Venezuela in 2013, 5.5 million have fled, which is nearly one out of every six people. Of these, most have resettled in other Latin American countries, namely Colombia, Peru, Chile and Ecuador. Of course, the U.S. got its fair share of us, too — just between 2014 and 2019, the number of Venezuelan immigrants in the United States more than doubled to over 460,000, more than any other immigrant group.
But Venezuelans in America aren’t lying around asking for government aid. We’re the most highly educated Hispanic group: Nearly 58% have a college degree (compared to 33% of Americans). Recent arrivals from Venezuela are also more highly educated than past ones. Among those who came from 2014 to 2019, more than 64% have a bachelor’s degree.
Education isn’t the only area in which Venezuelans excel. More than 67% of Hispanics of Venezuelan origin 16 years and older are employed compared to 60% of Americans. And our unemployment rate in 2019 was only 3.4%, compared with 4.5% for the whole population.
“Highly-educated” and “well-paid” aren’t descriptors you’d use for a human tsunami of cheap labor or welfare-users. Indeed, while their earnings are slightly below average, Hispanics of Venezuelan origin who speak English very well or as their first language out-earn Americans by nearly $5,000 annually. And as 21% of Americans were insured by Medicaid in 2019, that was true for only 14% of Venezuelan-Americans.
Culturally, Hispanics are natural conservatives. Venezuelans, for instance, could be a much-needed boost to American marriage rates — which have been on a rapid decline with terrible consequences for children. Less than 47% of Americans 15 and older are married, compared with over 55% of Venezuelans.
We’re not blue voters looking to get “woke.” We’re a voting bloc already won by conservatives. And thanks to our geographic distribution, we also hold significant political weight.
Venezuelan-Americans seem to have voted for Trump by a 2-1 margin in November and the most Venezuelan precinct in the country swung towards the GOP by a record 44 points. In fact, two of the districts with most Venezuelans are Florida’s 26th and 27th in South Florida, where 18,000 and 27,000 Venezuelans live, respectively. And these districts were flipped by small margins in November 2020 by Republicans Carlos Giménez and María Elvira Salazar.
Furthermore, there are over 20,000 Venezuelans in Georgia and over 70,000 in Texas — mostly in the Atlanta and Houston suburbs, areas that are becoming increasingly competitive.
Immigration restrictionists should do some more research on the immigration they so adamantly reject. After all, as an immigrant group, Venezuelans are clearly showing that they’re wrong — and we aren’t the only ones.
At the end of the day, Venezuelans not only get a better life in America, we make America better. A lot of the GOP doesn’t agree, but we simply disprove them every day.
Daniel Di Martino is a Venezuelan contributor to Young Voices and an economics Ph.D. student at Columbia University.
This is a reprint. This article was originally published on the Orlando Sentinel.