Speaking of Venezuela, until about four years ago, my sister was living in Caracas. When she was a senior in college, she met an engineering grad student from Venezuela and a year or so after she graduated, they got married and the following year, they moved to Caracas, where he was from. For years he worked for Bechtel Corp and would often get overseas assignments, including to the US (they once spent 18 months in Houston). They have one son, who's also a graduate engineer. Anyway, when things started to go all to hell down there, she decided to move back, along with her son and his family (he and his wife have two small girls). They're now living just outside of Detroit. Her husband also came, and in fact, he started the process to become a permanent resident (my wife and I are officially his 'sponsors') however, he kept going back and forth trying to sell their property there (they own a couple of apartments including the penthouse they were living in when they left).
Anyway, it appears that her husband as now decided to remain in Caracas but my sister and her son are staying here. Their son is of course an American citizen as are his two daughters. They've managed to get a Green Card for his wife and she's in the process of applying to be naturalized. He's got a really good job, being able to speak both fluent Spanish and English (in fact, he's considered to have TWO first languages) working for a tooling supplier who has customers both here and in several South American countries.
Now over the years, they had tried to move as much money out of Venezuela as possible, either directly or via third-party countries, like Panama. Unfortunately, they've lost most of what they had except for their real estate, whatever it's now worth. My sister's biggest problem is that she's nearly 70 but has not worked sufficient quarters to get Social Security or Medicare. Granted, she's invested what money she had left behind in the states, but that's only going to last so long. Her son bought a nice house and she's moved in with them last year.
John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:
The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without
