With the economy tanking with falling oil prices, Venezuelans with money and professional skills slowly began their mass exodus from the oil rich South American country in the late 2000s.

When inflation skyrocketed — to 800 per cent last year — amid rampant kidnappings and violence against government opponents, many of the not-so-wealthy decided they had to find a way out of the turmoil, some by sending their children to study abroad.

Now, when people can’t even put food on the table or get medicine and treatment from hospitals, even the poorest are fleeing Venezuela, where President Nicolas Maduro has been blamed for many of the problems.

The unrest has gotten so bad that the government-stacked Supreme Court stripped the opposition-controlled congress of its legislative powers — only for the court and the president to back down from the move after widespread protests around the capital and criticism by foreign governments.

Over the past year, Toronto’s FCJ Refugee Centre has received several inquiries a week from Venezuelans about seeking asylum in Canada.

“At the beginning, it was the international students who were already in Canada asking for help in making their claims. Now we are seeing families who come as visitors,” said Francisco Rico-Martinez of the refugee centre.

“We had someone who couldn’t get dialysis in hospital and another whose husband was killed by a kidnapper. It gets more complicated that people can’t find anything to eat and Venezuela had refused international aid until now (March). The food crisis there really amounts to persecution.”

According to the Immigration and Refugee Board, the number of asylum claims from Venezuelans more than doubled last year to 566 from 242 in 2015 and just 31 in 2013, though the majority of Venezuelan refugees are headed to Panama, Mexico, Spain, the United States and Colombia, which for decades struggled with its own violent civil war.

“I was collecting school supplies for Venezuelan students at my daughter’s school and the principal asked me why we needed the supplies because Venezuela is an oil-rich country,” said Anna Polga, 44, who fled political persecution in Caracas as a community leader and is now a permanent resident in Canada.

“Our country has a lot of natural resources but the government steals the resources through corruption. It was bad under (former president) Hugo Chavez. The country is worse now under Maduro. There are more human rights violations and torture. Our natural disaster is our government.”

In Canada, the conditions in Venezuela have been on the radar of both the House of Commons and Senate, which have invited Venezuelan Canadians to committee meetings for policy input and feedback.

There have been various waves of migration from Venezuela to Canada, beginning in trickles in the 1970s and ’80s when they came to study through government scholarship programs, followed by the exodus of the professionals when Chavez was elected president in 1998 on a socialist agenda.

Immigration Canada data show at least 3,300 Venezuelans have become permanent residents since 2014, with 527 others being granted asylum — three out of four Venezuelan refugees were accepted in Canada in each of the last two years. (The acceptance rate across all nationalities was about 65 per cent.)

Orlando Viera-Blanco, president of the Montreal-based Canadian Venezuelan Engagement Foundation, said he was not surprised by the trend as an estimated 1.5 million of his countrymen have migrated abroad in the last two years.

“We have increasing crimes. We have a serious food shortage and the government has refused to get help, pretending everything is OK,” said Viera-Blanco, a lawyer and newspaper columnist, who launched the group in January with other Venezuelans in exile to advocate for their countrymen’s human rights back home.

The foundation has already met with parliamentarians in Ottawa and is campaigning to raise money to provide Venezuelan students with notebooks, pencils and educational materials.

Mariangel Urdaneta, who came with her parents from Maracaibo in 2007 under the skilled worker program, said Canada’s more restrictive immigration selection criteria in recent years have left Venezuelans with few options. The recent changes favour candidates with higher proficiency in English and French, as well as Canadian education credentials and work experience.

“My family wasn’t poor in Venezuela. My cousins are middle-class, civil servants but even they can’t afford to eat. My aunt is a doctor, a director at a hospital. She quit her job because of the stress in getting people care. They have people dying because they have no insulin,” said the Oakville woman.

“Canada’s immigration has made it more difficult for people to immigrate here,” added the 25-year-old, whose extended families have migrated to Chile, Colombia and the U.S. “Many would not be able to stay in Canada if they don’t go through asylum. At least, now they feel safe here.”

Maria, who asked her full name not be used because she fears for the safety of her family in Caracas, said she was almost kidnapped at gunpoint last June near her home by two “colectivos” or pro-government thugs who recognized her from a street protest where she had collected signatures calling for Maduro’s resignation.

The attempt was foiled after the security guards at her building came to her rescue. She reported the incident to police, but the case was treated as an attempted robbery.

“These two men were wearing the same shirts as the colectivos at the protest,” said the former banker, 36, who, along with her husband, an engineer, and their 5-year-old daughter, was granted asylum in November on the grounds of political persecution.

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“You don’t feel protected by the police. They do worse things than those who kidnap you and rob you.”

Venezuelan Embassy officials did not respond to the Star’s repeated requests for comment for this article.

Correction – April 11, 2017: This article was edited from a previous version that mistakenly said Mariangel Urdaneta came from Caracas, Venezuela. In fact, she came from Maracaibo. As well, her extended families have migrated to Chile, Colombia and the U.S., not, Peru.

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