Diomira Becerra knew it was time to leave Venezuela when she took her four-year old daughter to the local park in Caracas and they saw a man shot dead in broad daylight in front of them. “That was the last straw. I left the next day,” says the 34-year-old former school teacher. Displaced by soaring crime and crushing recession, more and more Venezuelans make the same decision each day. Fleeing what was once Latin America’s richest country, former doctors and engineers, truckers and physiotherapists now work in supermarkets in London or as maids in Madrid, drive Ubers in Miami or paint houses in Bogotá, clear tables in Buenos Aires or wash windows in Barranquilla. The exodus is the international humanitarian dimension of Venezuela’s multiple domestic crises and probable $150bn debt default. This week, after a partial bailout from Russia, President Nicolás Maduro’s socialist government claimed its debt restructuring strategy was working for “the continued wellbeing of the Venezuelan people.” Numbers suggest otherwise. As many as 2m Venezuelans of a total 30m now live abroad and their numbers are rising fast as the country slides into hyperinflation, debt crisis and authoritarianism. According to the UN, which says it has documented government policies that seek to “systematically repress . . . and instil fear,” almost 50,000 Venezuelans sought asylum in 2017, as many as in the past three years together.