President Joe Biden, apparently, isn’t out to lunch on immigration anymore.
When the fragile ecosystem of Dry Tortugas, a national park off Florida’s coast, becomes a port of entry for hundreds of Cubans sailing rickety homemade boats, the time to act was yesterday.
So, with a quarreling, do-nothing Congress as a backdrop — and an unrelenting number of asylum seekers arriving every day — the Biden administration finally has taken serious steps to address immigration to South Florida and the Mexico border.
Months of record-breaking arrivals later, even Democrats are conceding, privately and publicly, that the levels of Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan and Venezuelan immigration is impossible to sustain, both politically and in terms of resources.
Some Dems praise Biden’s mix of new, legal open doors with his crackdown on arrivals aided by illegal activity.
“The new border actions Biden rolled out expand legal pathways while also putting into effect deterrents for illegal immigration and the smuggling and human trafficking that have existed,” said Felice Gorordo, a Biden ally, CEO of tech-hub eMerge Americas and co-founder of the U.S.-Cuba relations nonprofit Roots of Hope.
However, prominent Democrats including Sens. Bob Menéndez of New Jersey, Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico, Alex Padilla of California and Cory Booker of New Jersey think stricter rules will encourage more shady dealings, not stem migration.
In a joint statement, they condemned what they called “a transit ban” at the southern border and the extension of ex-President Donald Trump’s loathed Title 42 pandemic-era summary expulsions to include Cubans and Nicaraguans.
Indeed, the rules pose a profound shift politically. No more Biden looking the other way.
‘Carrot & stick’ policy
Immigrant advocates also rejected new policies that will end up turning away asylum seekers despite the creation of legal and safer pathways. Legal entry will include documentation and two-year work permits for the 30,000 vetted and paroled each month.
But, says the immigration advocacy group America’s Voice, Biden’s “carrot and stick approach” is “unbecoming of a pro-immigration president.”
Yet, without a Congress willing to overhaul the broken immigration system and Americans increasingly upset over illegal crossings, what other choices did Biden really have?
Republicans constantly use xenophobia to score political points. They’re united in the desire to see Biden fail at everything but, notably, his actions left them speechless. (Though probably not for long).
A White House fact sheet touted: “Unlike some Republican officials playing political games and obstructing real solutions to fix our broken immigration system, President Biden has a plan and is taking action.”
Voiceless most affected
Unfortunately, the most tragically affected by the change in policy will be people caught en route, risking their lives at sea or on dangerous multicountry treks to flee collapsing homelands like Haiti and failing regimes like Cuba’s and Nicaragua’s.
Will domestic immigration policy make any difference when the root causes of mass migration remain in place at home? When immigration is instigated by regimes like Cuba’s to get rid of the opposition and repress with more impunity?
Immigration is a profitable venture for the Cuban and Venezuelan dictatorships, and crucial support to gang-ruled Haiti. Cubans who leave ended up supporting relatives, according to estimates, to the tune of $2 billion to 3 billion in remittances during pre-pandemic years.
No Mariel comparison
No doubt, the unprecedented number of Cuban migrants in the Florida Keys finally catapulted border issues to the top of Biden’s priority list. Only a few days ago, the president walked away from a reporter asking about a crisis many see as another Mariel.
But forget allusions to the Mariel boatlift of 1980 under President Jimmy Carter.
The comparison sheds little light on the current Cuban immigration crisis testing the Biden administration’s election-time commitment to operate a humane, legal immigration system accessible to asylum seekers — and one that, on the other hand, doesn’t make a mockery of the nation’s borders.
This Cuban exodus has broken all-time records and continues into 2023 despite deaths and disappearances at sea.
Some 125,000 Cubans arrived in South Florida shores in a period of five months during Mariel, then it all ended as suddenly as it started. Back then, Haitians, too, were fleeing the Duvalier regime, but not in huge, visible numbers.
This exodus has been open-ended for years. During the past year alone, 2% of Cuba’s 11 million population has fled, most of them to the United States.
Cubans with resources fly to a third country, cross into Mexico and ask for asylum at the border. Cubans with nothing but homemade, barely floating vessels had, perhaps until now, no other option than to risk it all in the treacherous Florida Straits.
There’s less of an incentive to come here illegally with the opening of legal avenues.
But poor people from remote towns and provinces may not have the access, nor the ability to articulate need — and surely they will be first in line for expulsion under Biden’s repatriation rules.
It’ll be hard to change what has been working for them. What do they have to lose trying, besides their lives? Now, a five-year ban from trying again.
Most of the people arriving are young, driven by guts, hope and dreams of a better future. This is the exodus of “los primos,” the cousins, someone with his ear to the ground tells me.
When constant blackouts spoil what little food they hustle for their family, when the thought police constantly accosts, it’s impossible not to see migration as the only option.
It’s a never-ending story, an unbearable reality no Republican or Democratic rainmaker in Washington can change.
Fabiola Santiago is a columnist for the Miami Herald.