Migration crises — real or imagined — tend to animate voters. So it’s no surprise that a new emergency situation has emerged, manufactured by three Republican governors, two of whom are seeking reelection. The difference this time: The migrants are suing the governors.
First, the migrants in this case are not illegal aliens, or illegal anything. They are asylum seekers, and a class action lawsuit has been engaged by some of these people and their representatives here in the U.S. against Florida Governor Ron DeSantis who planned, paid for, and executed the unceremonious dumping of 48 Venezuelans on a tiny Massachusetts island.
The Venezuelans sent from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard are asylum petitioners: They have a right to be here and our nation offers people fleeing from a “well-founded fear of persecution” in their home country physical and legal protection. These types of laws distinguish the United States from places like … Venezuela and Cuba which offer no such protections.
Venezuela’s fortunes changed in 2013 when Hugo Chávez, the charismatic, leftist, a-little-less-loco-than-Trump leader died of cancer. Then the price of oil (which represents about 90 percent of all exports) collapsed on the world market and direct subsidy payments to the poor ended. Chaos has ensued, the current leader there is a grim-faced, not-bright, undemocratic leader named Nicolás Maduro, and relations between our two nations have calcified.
These intrepid Venezuelans trekked from their home through Colombia, through the Darién (the meanest, most forbidden jungle in the world), through Panama, Costa Rica, and the rest of Central America, they crossed Mexico and onto America — arriving in Texas. Why could they be treated like disposable cargo by a far-away Florida governor? Because, simply and sadly stated, they’re not Swedes. Or Ukrainians. They’re dark-skinned, poor people who are not nicely dressed — not out of “Central Casting.” What would any of us look like if we walked to Texas — from Venezuela?
The three Republican leaders who have been shipping out migrants govern Arizona, Florida, and Texas. Their theory: We here on the border (Florida is surrounded by water, Georgia, and Alabama) shoulder a disproportionate burden regarding arriving migrants from the south. It’s true that Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California are the first points of entry for migrants — documented or not — arriving over land from the global South but these states receive billions of dollars in federal grants to help offset educational and health costs. It’s also true that states with high influxes of immigrants are much more economically (and culturally) robust. California versus West Virginia, Texas versus South Dakota, for example.
The stunt of the three governors seems to have worked in the short term: They’ve forced a refocusing on our immigration system at a moment before a decisive election. But to paint this as “Biden’s” immigration crisis is absurd, ahistorical, and unhelpful. The three amigo governors don’t want to help solve problems; they only want to score political points. But the newly announced lawsuit and the fact that DeSantis’ state is home to hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who are a little skeptical of this performance — upset at the unkind treatment in America of brothers and sisters from the pátria — might indicate the stunt has stalled.
The irony behind all of this, of course, is that we desperately need laborers in the United States economy right now. The Biden administration could probably offer some sort of temporary, emergency provision to harmonize the present needs of the U.S. economy with the current migratory patterns affecting our southern border. A real fix — a comprehensive overhaul of our outdated immigration laws and provisions — is what’s really needed, but the Democrats’ majority is too thin in Congress and the Republicans are uninterested in any solutions that would inhibit their ability to weaponize the immigration debate.
Mr. Trump began his 2016 presidential campaign with a giant gamble — a mean-spirited, untrue attack on immigrants from Mexico. It worked. Governor DeSantis of Florida has turned to this Trump playbook, but the Florida governor has the charm, grace, and charisma of a different sort of dictator: Nicolás Maduro, president of Venezuela.
Bryce Ashby is a Memphis-based attorney and past board chair of Latino Memphis. Michael LaRosa teaches history at Rhodes College.
