Venezuelan students abroad suffer in currency rule trap

An abrupt change last autumn in Venezuela’s currency control policy has left potentially thousands of Venezuelan tertiary students worldwide without funds they had earmarked for education abroad, putting them at risk of dropping out and of violating immigration laws.

While some have kept quiet about their status, others are taking to social media to ask for help – be it money or prayers.

The students’ plight is complicated by concerns about returning to their native Venezuela, where the homicide rate is among the highest in the world, stories of kidnappings for ransom are commonplace and inflation last year reached 68.5%.

FocusEconomics, a website that tracks global trends, describes Venezuela's outlook for 2015 as “grim”. And reports last year of public corruption and human rights violations prompted United States President Barack Obama in March to bar Venezuelan officials who engage in such acts from entering the US or using its financial systems.

“For the middle class, studying abroad is a ticket out of the difficult Venezuelan life full of stress,” says Nelson Agelvis, a Caracas-based educational consultant who specialises in study abroad opportunities.

Now, he says, many of the students affected by the government’s currency controls have had to return to Venezuela or turn to the black market to convert their bolivares into US dollars or other foreign currency.

Currency policy change

Although the recent policy change came as a surprise to most of those affected, signs of trouble had been brewing, particularly as economic conditions in the country worsened.

Since 2003, Venezuelan students have been required to submit detailed documentation of their expenses abroad in order to receive the government’s exchange rate. In 2012, a new law limited the favourable rate only to students pursuing degrees in one of a government-approved set of 172 subjects in eight areas, such as engineering and agricultural sciences.

Then, last October, Venezuelan students – many of them well into their autumn semester studies abroad – received notices denying their applications.

Exact numbers of affected students are unclear. Media outlets have reported that more than 25,000 Venezuelan students are enrolled in more than 20 countries, including the United States, Canada, Australia, Spain, the United Kingdom and several other European countries.

Venezuela’s public ombudsman, Tarek William Saab, in April put the number at 18,000, and said his office had interceded on behalf of 300 cases involving students “who are finishing their courses, those who have very good marks, or those who are taking postgraduate studies”.

In comments to Ultimas Noticias in April, Saab also suggested that the government rate was being abused. He said 60% of students who received foreign currency to study abroad in 2013 and 2014 did not return to Venezuela.

About half of all students abroad were studying English and about a third were studying other languages including Mandarin, Saab said – majors that “I do not think should be a priority” for the government.

Last year, Venezuela's National Centre for Foreign Trade – now known as CENCOEX – ended authorised exchanges for study in Ireland amid reports that five language colleges had been falsifying student attendance records.

Venezuelan students in the US

In the United States, more than 7,000 Venezuelans were enrolled in 2013-14, the latest year for which statistics are available from the New York-based Institute of International Education, which monitors international student mobility.

Enrolments had dipped by 2% in 2012, after the restrictions on areas of study were imposed, but increased by 14% the next year.

As word spread last year of applications being denied, several universities in Florida – a popular destination for US-bound Venezuelan college students – braced for another round of enrolment declines.

But dropouts have been few, they say. And applications for this autumn are up. “They want to be here and somehow they find a way to be here,” says Cristina Florez, a director of international student services at Miami Dade College in downtown Miami.

The college’s 430 Venezuelans comprise about 40% of the international student population, and the volume of applications for new students from Venezuela is “incredible”, Florez says.

The University of Miami, which last year enrolled 198 Venezuelan students, expected to see a 50% drop in applications among freshmen this year but instead saw the numbers double, says Mark Reid, executive director of international admission.

Reid, who says his office is handling students “on a case by case basis”, is aware of two Venezuelans who left the university last year.

And at Miami's Florida International University, where about 300 students are Venezuelan: “We were all surprised that the numbers did not drop significantly this year,” says Ana Sippin, senior director of the office of international student and scholar services.

“The students somehow are figuring out how to do it.”

Some institutions, including Miami Dade College, have tapped emergency loan funds or alerted students to jobs on campus for which international students are eligible. Students from wealthier families are more likely to have access to US or European banks and therefore will be less affected, Reid says.

Others have taken out loans co-signed by relatives or friends who are US or Puerto Rican citizens, says Marisa Atencio, director of international student and scholar services at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. The institute averages about 22 Venezuelan students each year, and none to Atencio's knowledge has left because of the policy change.

Echoing the comments of college officials elsewhere, Atencio says the university has tried “to make procedures... smooth and supportive for the students”.

The bursar's office, for example, has not cancelled a student's class schedule if officials believe the student is working toward a resolution. Still, she adds: “There isn't much else that Georgia Tech has been able to do.”

Student responses

At Tyler Junior College in Texas, Carlos Cordero Montes was able to continue studying because his campus job came with benefits including a tuition break, free room and board, and a small salary.

Now, as he prepares to transfer to Texas A&M University in College Station, he has joined other Venezuelan students in adding his plea for help on a website called GoFundMe.com. “I am basically on my own here,” he says. “I have been keeping up with the news back home, but they have not done anything for us at all.”

Some students in the United States have applied for political asylum, or for authorisation to work off-campus – forbidden under standard student visa rules – because of financial hardship.

The US Citizenship and Immigration Services, a federal agency, offers those and other options for visa holders affected by “extreme situations”, according to the Department of Homeland Security website.

Rodolfo Marquez Vivas, a petroleum engineering major who just completed his freshman year at Texas A&M University in College Station, appealed to officials at Citgo Petroleum Corporation in Houston for help, so far with no luck.

He says he has received “a lot of support from the university”, but owes about US$10,000, and has not yet registered for the autumn semester. “The thing is, I don't have a way to continue,” he says.

There's another problem too, notes Venezuelan Carlos Moreno, founder of a Facebook group called Estudiantes Venezolanos en el Exterior – Venezuelan Students Abroad. Students who can't pay their tuition fees also won't be able to afford a flight back to Venezuela should their visa expire.

Moreno, student body president of Salt Lake Community College in Utah, says he raised these issues with officials at the Organization of American States in February, and with White House representatives of the Office of Public Engagement this month while attending an event for campus student leaders. But nothing has yet come of those conversations, he says.

“I would like to see the US government try to help us, to [put] pressure on the Venezuelan government,” says Moreno (32), a Venezuelan-trained lawyer.

“My life is a nightmare,” he adds. But “the problem right now is not just me. Thousands of [Venezuelans] are in the same situation in different countries.”