Comment by sien
11 hours ago
Not according to wikipedia :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuelan_refugee_crisis
In 1998, when Chávez was first elected, the number of Venezuelans granted asylum in the United States increased between 1998 and 1999.[30] Chávez's promise to allocate more funds to the impoverished caused concern among wealthy and middle-class Venezuelans, triggering the first wave of emigrants fleeing the Bolivarian government.[31]
Additional waves of emigration occurred following the 2002 Venezuelan coup d'état attempt[32] and after Chávez's re-election in 2006.[32][33] In 2009, it was estimated that more than one million Venezuelans had emigrated in the ten years since Hugo Chávez became president.[2] According to the Central University of Venezuela (UCV), an estimated 1.5 million Venezuelans (four to six percent of the country's total population) emigrated between 1999 and 2014.[15]
The Venezuelan refugee crisis has a lot to do with Chavismo.
The graph just after the paragraph you quoted contradicts it :)
It says the number of Venezuelans living abroad was 700,000 in 2015, and it skyrocketed from that point onward.
What happened around that time? - December 2014: Obama signed the first set of unilateral US sanctions on Venezuela - March 2015: Obama issued an executive order classifying Venezuela as an "unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security of the United States"
Sure, there may have been slow migration before the sanctions, but it could have been explained by a multitude of reasons, not necessarily Chavismo. For example, the frequent U.S.-backed riots and coups are surely a factor that encourages migration. People value security and stability.