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There is a crisis here.
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Millions of people have fled Venezuela as the country crumbles.
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A monthly salary doesn't even buy you a box of cereal.
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Many of them are coming over this border into Colombia.
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There is a lot of hunger there.
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Venezuela is in crisis. There is nothing there.
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Here in this border town of Cucuta, you see people with suitcases full of all their belongings.
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They don't know where they're going.
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They just know they need to get out of their country.
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All the stores are closed.
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All the businesses are shut down. The butcher, the supermarkets.
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If you need proof of how bad it is in Venezuela right now, look at this purse.
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This purse is made entirely of the bills of the Venezuelan currency, the Bolivares.
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Inflation is so high that this money is now completely worthless.
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So my friend Jorge over here has gathered a ton of this stuff
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and turned it into commodities, into purses, into sculptures.
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It is worse than it sounds and it sounds pretty bad.
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The country's inflation rate will rise to one million percent.
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With all this money, you would have been rich- a millionaire.
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More than a million Venezuelans have moved to Colombia in recent years.
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And in an era of record setting migration, when borders seem to be getting thicker, harder to cross,
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Colombia is doing something that you don't see very often.
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It's opening its doors and it's letting people in.
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The border crisis is shocking.
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It's a real humanitarian crisis.
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The economic crisis there is about to get even worse.
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Is there a point in which Colombia and other countries in Latin America step in and say enough is enough now?
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This border town of Cucuta is now totally bustling.
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This is the very end of the border.
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Where these people are entering.
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And the one thing that you'll hear that is a little interesting is...
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“Se compra cabello,” we buy hair.
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To continue on their way to make some money, the women will sell their hair.
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You basically get 100,000 pesos, which is like 30 dollars.
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I'm eating a Venezuelan styled hot dog
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and the guys are reflecting on how much this hot dog would cost
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if they were trying to buy it in Venezuela with the current economic situation.
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A month's worth of salary.
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-For a hot dog? -A month's worth of salary for a hot dog.
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87% of the country's households into poverty.
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Images that we've never seen in Latin America before is unfortunately something we're seeing now.
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The collapse of Venezuela didn't happen because of a civil war or a natural disaster,
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but rather the colossal economic mismanagement by the country's leader, Nicolas Maduro.
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In just a few years, Maduro grabbed control of most of the government
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and then drove the country into an economic disaster worse than the Great Depression and the fall of the Soviet Union.
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There are a lot of people who are poor and hungry.
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We can't get medicine for our children's illnesses. Or vaccines.
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In Venezuela right now, lunch costs a fortune.
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Of the two million people who have left Venezuela in the midst of this crisis,
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about one million have come to Colombia, easily more than any other country.
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The response by most countries in the region has been to put up new measures to stop migrants from flooding into their country.
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But not Colombia, here the borders stays relatively easy to cross.
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And even though Colombia already has millions of its own people in need of humanitarian assistance,
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the Colombian people and politicians continue to let these migrants in.
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So I have decided that we're not going to close the border.
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We have to give them support.
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Now we're in the refugee camp, this is what they're calling it.
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Here the government provides all sorts of services to these people.
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We have orthodontists, legal assistance, psychological guidance.
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Haircuts and manicures.
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Today in the camp, they're playing music.
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Some Colombian, some Venezuelan and everyone, locals, migrants
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start singing and clapping along.
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Borders don't divide us. We have the same sky over our heads.
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We want you to know, that your flag is my flag.
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We want to say, "thank you, Colombia. Bless you, Colombia."
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We are very thankful to the Colombian people, thanks to them we can eat.
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The Colombian government has given most of these migrants status,
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allowing them to live in the country, get healthcare, work and study for two years.
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But it's not just the Colombia government opening its doors.
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In a neighborhood near the border, people are starting taking migrants into their homes,
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indefinitely and for free.
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Here I have four [people].
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-Four people. Is it a family? -Yes, it's a family.
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I am not afraid. I know if I do it with a good heart, God will protect me.
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You have your own needs, is it hard to take on other people's needs?
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Of course. It isn't easy. But us Colombians are fighters.
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We try to support. The idea is to give them support.
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Carlos has helped us, we will always be thankful for that.
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They have treated us well. Thank God.
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And to understand why these people are opening up their doors to Venezuelans,
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you have to understand their past.
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If you go back to the 1800's, Colombia and Venezuela were actually a part of the same
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country called Gran Colombia.
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This country eventually broke up into the modern states we know today.
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Decades later, in the 80's and 90's, Colombia was experiencing
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some of its worst violence in its decades long war with a rebel group called the FARC.
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This war displaced more than seven million people,
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more than any other modern war.
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Hundreds of thousands of those people fled to Venezuela, where the economy was thriving
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And the Venezuelans took them in.
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I went to Venezuela. To the east of Venezuela. I was there for two years.
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-And Venezuelans... ? -They treated me very well.
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People there are very welcoming.
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So in a sense, this the Colombians' way of paying back Venezuelans for the hospitality they were given.
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Here at the border, you go down the street a little bit,
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and you see this sign that says welcome to Colombia.
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Above it, it says, “ Colombia and Venezuela, united forever."
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In spite of of these two countries being different, having very different governments.
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There is this common identity among the people.
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But there are reasons to believe this sense of solidarity might not last forever.
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A slew of crimes, allegedly committed by Venezuelans, have led to a new wave of skepticism in the country.
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Earlier this year, the police chief in this border town told people
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that they shouldn't rent their properties to Venezuelans after a migrant was arrested for a homicide.
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Before, you'd arrive and the people would say, "Welcome! Come in!"
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Everybody was eager to help.
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But some have lost trust because sadly there are Venezuelans who have come to do bad.
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But despite the growing skepticism,
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many Venezuelans continue to see tremendous support in Colombia,
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a country that has chosen to keep its doors open to the thousands of migrants who come in everyday.