Venezuelan expats struggle with virus restrictions

The coronavirus pandemic has left millions of Venezuelan migrants in a dire situation in their host countries.

As work dries up, many are starting to go hungry. Some are being evicted from overcrowded rentals and on the streets.

Misael Cocho had been working odd jobs in his adopted home of far-away Peru, sending a little money left over each month back to his mother and 5-year-old son in Venezuela for food and school clothes.

Then coronavirus cases began to skyrocket in Peru. The 24-year-old was fired from his job, forced to sell an old TV so he could buy food, and left with nothing to send his family living in a poor Caracas neighborhood called The Cemetery.

For Cocho, the decision of whether to stay in Peru or go home is one he wrestles with every day as he watches time slip by. So far, he's determined to remain in Lima.

Nearly 5 million Venezuelans are scattered across Latin America in one of the world's largest migrations today, driven by Venezuela's deepening economic and humanitarian crisis. At least half make a living in the informal sector as day laborers, street performers, vendors and waiters.

Roughly 15% of Venezuelans have left in the last several years.

The largest number traveled by foot or in buses for neighboring Colombia, where over 1.8 million now live. Others went to Brazil, Ecuador and Peru, where they embarked on building new lives as migrants far from family.

Coronavirus has brought many of those dreams to an abrupt halt.

Under a strict quarantine, many migrants in Colombia's capital have been forced to either break the law and go out to make money and buy food or stay behind closed doors and go hungry.

An estimated one million Venezuelans - half of the migrant population in Colombia - have no legal migratory status.

Faced with such adverse conditions, at least 14,000 have decided to journey home, even if it means walking countless miles, according to Colombia's migration office. The government has provided 326 bus trips to usher migrants to border points.

Provash Budden, Mercy Corps' regional director for the Americas, said it's become all too common for migrants to make this cold calculation.

"It is a double whammy for them to be able to survive in one country and still try and support their families back in Venezuela," Budde said.

Cocho worked as a motorcycle taxi driver in Venezuela but decided to seek better opportunities in Peru a year ago. He made the long journey by bus deciding he could be more helpful to his family abroad, despite having to say goodbye. He hopes soon to resume working once the health crisis lifts so he can again start to send money home.

His last contribution before the pandemic amounted to little more than $10. His mother made it stretch, buying food and the basics for herself and his 5-year-old son, who lives in Caracas rather than with his mother, struggling to support her two other children.

His mother, Mailyin Pérez, 48, lives up several twisting and narrow flights of stairs to a spartan, three-room apartment painted bright pink outside. She barters small items she knits. These days face masks are in big demand, like one she tightly knitted from azure blue yarn that hugged her face.

The highlight of her day is getting text messages from her son, who calls every few days so that her grandson can hear his father's voice, even if from far away.

Pérez tells her son not to worry about sending money. She's more worried about the coronavirus.