Men of Labor

What European immigrant labor did for the expanding U.S. in the 19th century it is doing on a smaller scale for Venezuela in the 20th. Since World War II, some 340,000 foreigners, mostly skilled workers, have migrated to Venezuela and eagerly gone to work on the booming country's new buildings, industries and farms. Last year more than 71,000 entered, giving Venezuela the highest per-capita immigration rate in the world.

The new Venezuelans are scattered from the mouth of the Orinoco to Maracaibo, but nearly two-thirds of them live in Caracas, where they help to create an atmosphere of hustle and bustle rare in Latin America. From the equator to the Rio Grande, Venezuela is the only country where well-paid Europeans perform manual labor. Hard-working Italians, Spaniards and Portuguese dig ditches, pour concrete, lay bricks, hammer nails. The immigrants seldom fool around on the job; when it rains, they don slickers and keep working. There is some local resentment of the newcomers' all-work-and-no-play attitude, and radio programs carry plenty of anti-immigrant jokes, but government officials are well aware that Venezuela has the immigrants to thank whenever a new building, a new road or a new airfield is completed on schedule.

About 90% of the newcomers pay their own way to their new homeland, but, conscious of her need for human brain and brawn, underpopulated Venezuela spends about $1,000,000 a year recruiting and transporting immigrants and setting them up on farms in the interior. Said a Caracas newspaper: "The republic needs immigrants in abundance to increase our human resources. We ask only that they be men of labor and respectful of our laws."

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