LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: Colombia Struggles to Control Border Overrun by Desperate Venezuelans. “Police commander admits stopping refugees is futile: ‘How are you going to control people when the issue is that they are hungry?’”

One of the migrants, 58-year-old Hernan Rodriguez, said the trip, his first outside Venezuela, hadn’t been very dignified. To keep his clothes dry crossing the river, he had stripped to his underwear and carried his small suitcase above his head. His business had gone belly up, he explained, and he was seeking a new life in the Colombian capital.

“I would be finished if I had stayed,” he said, describing how the comfortable life back home had unraveled. “People beg, they eat garbage. You see it all and say, ‘This isn’t Venezuela.’ ”

With a handful of U.S. dollars, he was able to buy a bus ticket to Bogotá.

But the highway leading away from this border region is crowded with Venezuelans who have no bus money. They walk, carrying luggage, bottles of waters, babies, hoofing it sometimes hundreds of miles and at altitudes topping 11,000 feet.

Carlos Eduardo Alvarado, 38, made the illegal crossing into Colombia and, on a recent day, was walking with a small group of friends. They all had come from Barquisimeto, some 350 miles in Venezuela’s interior. They had 360 miles ahead of them before arriving in Medellín, where they hoped to find work.

For Mr. Alvarado, it was imperative—he has four children to feed back home.

But if you’re opposed to socialism, it’s because you’re an uncaring monster.