With Nicolás Maduro in U.S. custody, Venezuela’s future is looking much brighter than most could have imagined just a few weeks ago. Since 2015, around 7 million Venezuelans have left the country as the country’s economic crisis deepened and political repression increased. Now, there may be a light at the end of the tunnel. To be sure, many questions remain to be answered, including over who leads the country; if some form of the regime and its accompanying oppression remain in place, it seems unlikely that people will want to return. But one thing is very clear: If Venezuela is to recover, it needs its people back.
Today, many people around the world who are granted asylum never return, even once it is safe to do so. This is particularly true of those who have sought asylum in Western countries. In Bosnia, only 42 percent of those who left — chiefly to wealthier, Western European countries — during the Bosnian War had returned by 2018, more than 20 years after hostilities ceased. Sri Lanka’s civil war, too, saw dismal return rates upon the conflict’s end.
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