From the BBC:
“Why are migrants in the US
being sent to Democrat-run areas?”
(Venezuelan migrants were
recently sent from Texas to just outside Vice-President Kamala Harris'
residence)
Thousands of migrants have been
sent from Republican-led states to Democratic-run areas as part of a growing
row with the federal government and the Biden administration. Two buses carrying people primarily from
Venezuela were recently left outside Vice-President Kamala Harris' residence in
Washington DC. Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who approved the move, then called
for tighter immigration policies. The night before, Florida took credit for
sending two planes carrying migrants to the wealthy enclave of Martha's
Vineyard in Massachusetts, an apparent escalation of a tactic that has also
already seen migrants taken to Chicago and New York. While opponents of the
tactic have described it as cruel and inhumane, three state governments insist
it is a result of the Biden administration's own border policies.
Why are the migrants being
moved? Three states - Texas, Arizona and Florida - have announced initiatives
to move migrants to Democratic-led ones, which they have accused of being
"sanctuary" jurisdictions that fail to enforce immigration laws. Officials
in those states say the tactic is aimed at mitigating the impact of migration
flows in local communities. They have also said the measure is designed to
increase pressure on the Biden administration to do more to reduce the number
of people crossing the US-Mexico border, which has hit a record high this year.
In a letter instructing local authorities to begin carrying out the initiative,
Governor Abbott argued that the federal government had "no real plan"
for addressing an unprecedented "surge of illegal aliens" that might
otherwise find themselves in Texan cities. "Texans cannot continue to
shoulder the burdens imposed by open-border advocates in other parts of the
country," he wrote.
How many have travelled? According
to statistics compiled by the BBC's US partner CBS, as of 16 September Texas
and Arizona had sent almost 300 buses carrying approximately 13,000 migrants to
Washington DC, New York and Chicago. The bulk of these people were sent
from Texas, which has spent $12m (£10.5m) to finance the journeys. Arizona has
spent about $4m. While we know Florida's state legislature has
appropriated $12m to transport migrants, the exact details of its relocation programme
remain unclear. The BBC has reached out to state officials for comment.
Is bussing migrants legal?
(Buses carrying migrants arrive
in New York City in late August)
While experts expect that the relocation
of migrants will be legally challenged, at the moment it is still unclear what
- if any - laws may have been broken. Federal prosecutors and officials are
reportedly weighing a range of legal options. Some - including Chicago Mayor
Lori Lightfoot - have suggested that the migrants are being "misled"
about the trips. Others have even compared the process to kidnapping and people
smuggling. State officials, however, insist that the migrants are going
willingly, and in Texas' case say they have signed a voluntary waiver. Some
of the migrants who arrived in Martha's Vineyard told reporters that they were
promised work, assistance and expedited paperwork. They also thanked Florida's
governor for having sent them to the wealthy enclave, according to US media.
"The big question is what they are being told, and if there is any
sort of fraud or inducement," immigration lawyer Aleksander Cuic, the
director of the Immigration Clinic at Case Western Reserve University, told the
BBC. "But how would anyone know if there's nothing in writing?" Mr
Cuic added that the states will probably argue they are merely doing what the
federal government does all the time - moving detained migrants around the
country.
Why are they choosing to go? According
to Adam Isacson, a migration and border expert from the Washington Office on
Latin America, many would have ultimately left Texas and the other Republican
states anyway. "You've had migrants coming to all these cities in
huge numbers in the past, but they always paid for it themselves," he
said. "You've always had tens of thousands of migrants coming to New York
City from the border, for example." Several people who had
travelled on these buses told the BBC they were informed of where they were
going - and that in some ways, a bus north from Texas was the best available
option. "I could have stayed on the streets [in Texas] or come on
the bus. So I came," Darling Vielma, an 18-year-old Venezuelan travelling
with two children, said after she was brought to Washington DC in early
September. "There was nobody for me in Texas." Similarly,
migrants in Texas said they were willing to be transported to other states -
and were told where they'd potentially be going - but that officials told them
that women and children were being given priority. Several said they
would prefer to be sent out of state than have to remain in Texas, far from
family and without shelter. "I've got to take the opportunity if
offered," one man said on Thursday. "Or I'll be out on the
street."
What does this mean for US
politics? Mr Isacson described this tactic as "political
theatre". "There are six or seven weeks until the midterms,
and Republicans are starting to slip in the polls," he said. "[They]
are sort of creating their own [migrant] caravan. It's something that their
base can get excited about." The tactic has already led to an
escalating war of words between the White House and the Republican state
governors. President Biden, for example, has accused the governors of
"playing politics with human beings" and "using them as
props". The Republicans, in turn, have laid the blame squarely at
Mr Biden's feet and derided the Democrats as not doing enough to stop migrants
from crossing the border in the first place. "The minute even a
small fraction of what those border towns deal with every day is brought to
their front door, they [Democrats] all of a sudden go berserk," Governor
DeSantis said.
^ I see the good and the bad in
bussing Illegal Immigrants (calling them Migrants makes it sound as though they
entered the United States legally – which none of them did.)
The Federal Government has failed
(for Decades) to deal with Illegal Immigration – both Republicans and Democrats.
Add to that the lack of Federal Government Assistance to the Border States
directly affected by Illegal Immigration (I will include Florida as a Border
State since it gets a lot of Cuban and Haitian Illegals by sea and not by
land.)
Vice President Harris was tasked
with fixing the Border/Illegal Immigration Problem and has done little to
nothing to do anything – meaning the problem has only been worsened 3-Fold.
Since the Federal Government (the
President, the Vice-President, Congress, US Border Patrol, etc.) it was left to
the States themselves to do something. They have chosen to bus the Illegal
Immigrants to Self-Declared Sanctuary Cities and other areas to make this not only
a State Problem (as it has for years) but a Nationwide Problem (as it should
be.)
VP Harris did next to nothing to
fix the problem she was tasked with (along with Biden and many others in DC) so
it is only fitting that the Illegal Immigrants be taken to DC so these
Politicians can see the real face of those whose job it is to help. Maybe now
they will start doing their job and help the Illegal immigrants be sent back to
their Home Countries, they will help the Border States and the Americans
constantly and directly being affected by all of this.
As for the US States doing the
bussing/flying: the only issue I see wrong in any of this is if the Illegal
Immigrants were lied to before their trip or were forced to go. It is one thing
to forcibly deport them out of the United States (which is legal) and another
to forcibly move them to another State (which probably isn’t legal.)
The Sanctuary Cities and States (there
are around 560 of them) should gladly receive these Illegal Immigrants and
provide them with Food and Housing until the Federal Government finally does
something about the Illegal Immigration Problems.
El Paso, Texas gets around 1,000
Illegal Immigrants every single day and so is straining everything done there
(and that is just one example.) It’s time places like Los Angeles, Seattle,
Portland, Boston, New York City, Chicago and Washington DC get to experience
the strain for once. ^
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