Panelists:

• Patrick Gage, Director of Development, Scalabrini International Migration Network 
• Lara Setrakian, Founder, News Deeply 
• Christine Mendonça, CEO and Co-Founder, Humans on the Move

In a AS/COA conversation in New York about Venezuela's migration crisis, which the panelists agreed can now be called a "refugee crisis," experts discussed why the international community hasn't done more to respond to the situation. The panelists shared data and anedoctes on the current flow of migrants and agreed on what Lara Setrakian called "a higher level of solidarity in Latin America than in many regions."

"Things got so bad at the end that the government was essentially using food handouts or the promise of those in order to coerce or coax people to vote." That's how AS/COA Vice President for Policy and Editor-in-Chief of Americas Quarterly Brian Winter described the most recent vote that happened in Venezuela on May 20.

The only question is how the international community now, he explained, and added that another important issue is the torrent of Venezuelan migrants pouring into neighboring countries. "Many of those countries are reaching a breaking point right now," said Winter.