Tim Leffel’s Cheapest Destinations

Lost Liberties and the Brain Drain

In the most recent issue of Perceptive Travel we published a story by Michael Buckley on Lands of Lost Liberties. Buckley has spent plenty of time in repressed places doing articles and researching guidebooks, including Burma and Cuba. While you could argue that China’s schizophrenic version of command and control hasn’t slowed down their recent growth, in other locations it’s clear that less freedom eventually equals less wealth.

What will this mean for Venezuala? The signs are already clear. Business Panama reports that the wealthy people driving up prices in Panama City are not Americans or Canadians, but Venezuelans escaping an ugly future at home. “According to Panama’s migration authorities, some 10,000 more Venezuelans came to Panama in the first eight months of this year than during the whole of last year.”

Real estate salesman Jorge Blaisdell is selling 500 houses on the outskirts of Panama City that will go for between $300,000 and $800,000, and have been advertised extensively in Venezuela.

“Some 80 percent of our clients are foreigners, and 75 percent are Venezuelan,” Blaisdell said. “They are looking for a plan B.”

International Living confirmed the effect in its most recent issue, saying agencies are telling them that prices are spiking because of a huge influx of business people (and their families) from Venezuela. In other words, the bright entrepreneurs that are necessary for the future growth of Venezuela are moving on to more fertile pastures.

But there’s always oil, right? Yes, but there’s a problem there too since the brightest and most skilled oil workers are also leaving in droves. Over 3,000 Venezuelans have moved to Alberta, Canada drawn by the oil industry there: Veteran Oil Workers Flock to Frigid Alberta.

Frigid, remote Alberta has become one of the world’s fastest growing enclaves of Venezuelans, rivaling such warm-weather spots as Weston, Fla., outside Miami; and Sugar Land, Texas, near Houston. There are now 3,000 Venezuelan-Albertan families, up from 800 or so last year. Some Albertans now call Evergreen, a Calgary housing development, “Vene-green” because of the 100 families who have bought split-level homes there, and dangle Venezuelan flags from car rearview mirrors.

The new arrivals are hardly huddled masses. Many are oil-field veterans who have taken positions in Canadian refineries at salaries topping $100,000 a year.

Who will be left in Venezuela as Chavez clamps down on dissent and turns to socialism? The people who don’t have the money to leave, of course. The ones already at the bottom of the economic ladder. Ayn Rand would have gotten a kick out of this one. Once oil production falls further, as it inevitably will since the oil expert foreigners have also been kicked out, look out below!