The United Nations is pressuring Peru and Ecuador to drop their passport requirements, put into place after vast human waves of Venezuelans fleeing socialism inundated those countries.  Bad, bad Ecuador and Peru for wanting to control their nation's borders.  Borders bad, uncontrolled entry good.  How very convenient for Venezuela's Maduro regime, which is at the root of the problem.

According to Al Jazeera:

The United Nations has urged Latin American countries to ease entry for thousands of people fleeing Venezuela's deepening economic and political crisis.

The call on Thursday came after Ecuador and Peru announced tighter entry requirements for Venezuelans.

"We recognise the growing challenges associated with the large scale arrival of Venezuelans," UN refugee agency chief Filippo Grandi said in a statement issued jointly with the International Organization for Migration.

"It remains critical that any new measures continue to allow those in need of international protection to access safety and seek asylum," Grandi added.

The U.N. wants them to...let people in, even though they cannot pay for them.  As consolation, U.N. functionaries claim they "understand."  Ecuador, for instance, has already taken in 630,000 Venezuelan refugees without passports according to the U.N., raising its actual population level 4%.  Maybe Ecuador should print money to pay for these refugees to please the U.N., just as Venezuela pays its bills?  One-million-percent inflation, anyone?

This points to what the United Nations should be really targeting and hasn't: Venezuela itself, and the monstrous Maduro regime that caused this man-made crisis.

It was the United Nations that so conspicuously succored the Venezuelan regime, dating from the days when Hugo Chávez hooted on about the "smell of sulfur" against President George Bush.  Venezuela was awarded a seat on the United Nations Security Council as recently as 2014 and, kid you not, has gotten awards from the U.N. for hunger alleviation.  The U.N. gave Venezuela a position on its Human Rights Council.  Hugo Chávez's billionaire daughter (wealth derived from looting the treasury) served as Venezuela's credentialed United Nations envoy.  Why didn't the U.N. put the brakes on any of that?  Why didn't it put Venezuela on the spot for that, leaning on Venezuela to clean up its home act?

Last March, the U.N. Human Rights Commission condemned U.S., Canadian, E.U., and allied sanctions on Venezuela as harmful to the little guy, perfectly in line with keeping the Maduro regime in power.  U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley "rocked the boat" last year regarding the Maduro regime's odious human rights violations, and nothing came of it.  Everything the U.N. ever did was to protect the Maduro regime's interests as it beavered away at destroying its country.

Now we have the human waves.

But no condemnation from the U.N. about Maduro.  No throwing Venezuela out of the club.  The crime driving this mass migration is the biggest seen in Latin America, a Pol Pot grade of socialist misery, human waves outward, that merits squeezing the hell out of the Maduro regime.  Yet not a word of U.N. condemnation or any U.N. sanction of that socialist hellhole in misery so great that it's now washing up against the shores of Peru, Ecuador, and every other nation in the hemisphere, including ours.  The U.N.'s claim about "people in need" is particularly disingenuous, given that all Venezuelans are people in need, and Maduro has refused to permit aid to roll in.  What it shows is that the U.N. cares about "people in need" only if they challenge borders, and never mind the ones stuck inside, too poor to emigrate.

Look, I can see if the United Nations might lean on a country to accept refugees if what we are talking about were a natural disaster, such as an earthquake, volcano, or mudslide (Latin America has some big ones), and offered an open checkbook to cover at least some expenses.

But this is no natural disaster, and far as I can see, the U.N. is not offering money.  It's the sure-as-sunrise byproduct of socialism, the monstrous system that drives millions from their nations, seeking a life of exile preferable to their own homes – with its empty shelves, failed medical care, Maduro diet (the average Venezuelan has lost 19 pounds based on the signature shortages of socialism), hyperinflation, end of rule of law, and the systematic destruction of the private sector.  That's all on Venezuela, and that's why the refugees are fleeing.

Why should these other countries be loudly pressured to clean up after the Venezuelan disaster when Venezuela itself is refusing to permit foreign aid to flow in?  Why should the U.N. be in the business of telling countries to open their borders and forget about passports?  Does the U.N. let people into its headquarters without badges and guards?

The U.N. has no problem putting these countries on the spot, telling them to drop passports to entry, possibly as a means of weakening the idea of passports and borders altogether.  I've criticized Latin American countries for their hypocrisy on this (eight years ago, they attacked Arizona for wanting to secure its borders), but nothing tops the hypocrisy of the U.N.  Instead of recognizing the root of the problem, which is Venezuela itself, and lancing that boil, they press others to make it all better so that the Maduro regime can carry on in its horrors in peace.