CARACAS, VENEZUELA –  Last month 20 Venezuelans were arrested as they were trying to sneak into Curaçao, the island country in the southern Caribbean Sea, using a small boat — just like Cubans rafters do to make their way to Florida.

Venezuela’s northernmost point is less than 20 miles away from the Dutch territory, so this has become the route of choice for dozens trying to flee the socialist, hunger-stricken country every week.

According to a Datin Corp poll released last week, 57 percent of Venezuelan registered voters want to leave the country. This means that approximately 12 million people want out, almost half of the 30 million who populate the country if we take out children and teens.

In a similar survey conducted in 2015, Datin Corp found out that 49 percent of Venezuelans wanted to move overseas.

Datin Corp’s head, political analyst Jesus Seguias, said that one of the most surprising facts this year is that as many as one of every four admirers of the late Hugo Chavez also said they would emigrate if they could.

“They are Chavistas and they declare themselves as such, but they are angry at President Nicolas Maduro because of the country’s situation,” he said to Fox News Latino.

The country’s situation is one of acute shortages of the most basic products, a 700 percent inflation projected for 2016 and record levels of street crime.

According to Seguias, the new rise is partly explained by the number of opposition members and independents who now want out — 71 percent and 59 percent, respectively.

“The desire of leaving is clearly related to the lack of hope and the disappointment at the current situation,” said Seguias, warning that the number could escalate if a vote to recall President Maduro is not held this year, as the majority of Venezuelans expect.

Yet the wish to relocate is for most people an almost impossible dream.

“Leaving your country is a real complex matter,” said sociologist Ivan De La Vega, professor at Simon Bolivar University. “It requires a plan and is risky, so normally those who emigrate are young people without children.”

He said that some countries in the region are setting an increasing number of restrictions to avoid undesired migration from Venezuela.

Curaçao, for example, now requires any Venezuelan entering the island to carry at least $300 in cash, hold hotel reservations and have a return ticket. In neighboring Aruba, some people are asking the government to start demanding a visa to all Venezuelans.

In May, the Curaçao Red Cross announced that they were working on a contingency plan to deal with Venezuelan expatriates, but expressed concern because they said the country simply doesn’t have the resources needed.

Since Chavismo took power in 1999, more than 1.8 million Venezuelans have fled the country, De La Vega said.

Up until 2012 most of them were highly educated professionals who were typically well received anywhere they went. A Pew Research Center conducted in early 2013 estimated that 51 percent of Venezuelans living in the U.S. at the time had at least a college degree.

But that began to change rapidly after Maduro took power in March of 2013.

“In 2013 and 2014 we had a new wave of migration that included a wider range of social strata,” De La Vega told FNL.

According to an investigation published last month by the Grupo de Diarios America, the top three countries receiving Venezuelan exiles are currently the U.S., Spain and Colombia.

“We have been able to find Venezuelans living in all five continents and in at least 96 countries.

The list keeps growing. Many leave to one place and then move to another,” the sociologist said.

Many of those who choose Spain and Colombia are descendants of Spanish and Colombian immigrants who settled in Venezuela years ago, so they don’t count as foreigners.

“The total number of emigrants could rise to up to 3 million,” De La Vega said. “We would be able to calculate the number better if [the government of] Venezuela kept a better record of entries and departures,” he added.

Franz von Bergen is a freelancer reporter living in Caracas.

Venezuela has brought a new gun law into effect which bans the commercial sale of firearms and ammunition.

Until now, anyone with a gun permit could buy arms from a private company.

Under the new law, only the army, police and certain groups like security companies will be able to buy arms from the state-owned weapons manufacturer and importer.

The ban is the latest attempt by the government to improve security and cut crime ahead of elections in October

Venezuela saw more than 18,000 murders last year and the capital, Caracas, is thought to be one of the most dangerous cities in Latin America.

‘Must do more’

The government has been running a gun amnesty in the run-up to the introduction of the new law to try to encourage people to give up their illegal arms without fear of consequences.

One member of the public in Caracas told the BBC: “They’re killing people every day. This law is important but they need to do more, they’re not doing enough now.”

Hugo Chavez’s government says the ultimate aim is to disarm all civilians, but his opponents say the police and government may not have the capacity or the will to enforce the new law.

Criminal violence is set to be a major issue in presidential elections later in the year.

Campaign group The Venezuela Violence Observatory said last year that violence has risen steadily since Mr Chavez took office in 1999.

Several Latin American countries have murder rates far higher than the global average of 6.9 murders per 100,000 people.

According to a recent United Nations report , South America, Central America and the Caribbean have the highest rates of murder by firearms in the world.

It found that over 70% of all homicides in South America are as a results of guns – in Western Europe, the figure was closer to 25%.

The banning of private gun ownership in Venezuela has made firearms such a valuable commodity that 57% of police killed in the nation’s capital this year were targeted for their weapons, according to Venezuela’s largest newspaper.

El Universal reports that 57% of police killed in Gran Caracas–the greater Caracas metro area–were robbed for their guns, according to official national security statistics “obtained extra-officially.” These include both common police and the members of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces, which operate on a federal level. Of the 47 police killings on the record in 2015, 27 occurred as part of a gun robbery.

Late Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez banned private gun ownership in 2012, citing the escalating murder rates that have continued to climb under current President Nicolás Maduro. Both commercialization and importing of guns was banned, though firearms of all shapes and sizes are believed to be readily accessible in Caracas’ worst neighborhoods still.

GunPolicy.org, a University of Sydney project that tracks gun possession internationally, claims that there are 3,250,000 privately owned guns in Venezuela today, despite the ban. Of those, between half and 1.5 million are registered–meaning they are owned by law enforcement officials, the only Venezuelan citizens allowed to possess such weapons. The other weapons are not registered and difficult to track.

As a result, criminals have increased efforts to snatch up any and every type of firearm that comes their way. A report from WLRN, a South Florida news outlet, notes this month that those tracking weapons in Venezuela have found that many are not small self-defense weapons, but “heavy artillery” and “weapons of war” that find their way to the Latin American black market. This creates a significantly less safe atmosphere in the country, as criminals arm themselves at disproportionately high rates.

The police death toll for the first 100 days of 2015 nationally is currently at 97, according to Fox News Latino, yet Maduro has not mentioned gun violence on television since November 25, 2014. (It is worth noting that Maduro, who has his own television and radio program, was on Venezuelan state TV 69.5% of the days of his presidential tenure so far.) Maduro’s most prominent attempt to address gun violence occurred last September, when he announced the debut of government “disarmament centers” in which civilians could return their illegal weapons with impunity.

Perhaps this is due to growing violence against police, which rarely receives attention without its counterpart, police violence against civilians. Maduro legalized the use of lethal force against peaceful protesters in January as a “proportional” response when police feel endangered. Less than one month later, a police officer shot 14-year-old Kluiverth Roa to death on his way back from school; Roa was not protesting, but had to walk through a protest to get home. Venezuelan authorities downplayed the incident and returned to their usual rhetoric regarding protesters. In March, Venezuelan Ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS) Roy Chaderton joked on a Venezuelan state TV program that bullets cross through the brains of anti-socialists faster than through Chavistas’ brains because their heads are “empty.”