Democratic mayors and politicians in large American cities, such as New York, have put pressure on Washington for months over the flood of undocumented immigrants they receive. Their main claim was to request the simplification of procedures so that they could access the labor market legally.
President Joe Biden, who had been reluctant to the proposal because it meant offering ammunition to the Republicans, threw out the ball. Until he has given in.
The Administration will immediately and temporarily grant work permits to 472,000 Venezuelans who are fleeing the humanitarian crisis in their country and entered the United States before July 31. The decision, which gives them 18 months of protection against possible deportation, comes at a very critical time.
On the border with Mexico there has been a new spike in the entries of undocumented immigrants, with 9,000 arrests on Thursday alone. Rolando Salinas, mayor of Eagle Pass (Texas), declared a state of emergency a day earlier because the flow of arrivals reached 2,500 people that day alone.
These facts reinforce the ultraconservatives, who ask for new anti-immigration measures or, otherwise, they will leave the federal Administration without money as of September 30, the date on which the fiscal year expires and the budgets must be approved. The decision to “legalize” these almost half a million undocumented immigrants reinforces their thesis that Biden has opened the border and that the nation, threatened by an invasion, faces the danger of losing its idiosyncrasy.
Kevin McCarthy, Republican president of the Lower House, is “kidnapped” by this group of extremist legislators. There is a good chance that, starting September 30, there will be what is known as a government shutdown. This means that federal public services will no longer be provided except those considered essential.
McCarthy’s ultra colleagues make it a condition that the budget project includes an important item to stop the arrival of immigrants, to the detriment of a new aid of 24,000 million dollars to Ukraine in its war with Russia, something that worries them little or not at all. . The White House and progressives oppose it.
McCarthy knows that he is in the hands of that minority of coreligionists, encouraged by Donald Trump. They are the legislators who forced a vote 15 times to accept that McCarthy was president. Now they are threatening to force his resignation. He could overcome the obstacle if he launched a proposal agreed upon by moderate Republicans and Democrats that would be approved in the Senate.
However, a solution like that could mean his resignation from his dream position. His surrender was reflected again yesterday. After suffering two consecutive defeats in his military financing project, McCarthy announced that he will withdraw 300 million destined for Ukraine that appeared in the Pentagon budget, as demanded by the ultras.
The point is that behind this political marketing there are people and they are on the American streets. Like Randy, a man in his early 20s who was in trouble. He was a food deliveryman and didn’t know how to get around to make the next delivery, in the upper west part of Manhattan, the Upper West Side. In reality, the address was just around the corner.
He showed a paper to a passerby, but he was unable to understand what he was asking. He spoke in Spanish. Next to him there was another person who understood him and told him how easy it was to go to that other place. “I don’t know any English,” he confessed. “But I’m going to learn, I want survival and a good life,” he promised.
It happened a few weeks ago. Randy, a clandestine worker with a salary that is half of what the others earn, explained that he was Venezuelan, who took almost two months to flee the misery of his country and reach the United States through endless tribulations, such as overcoming the Darien jungle and cross the Rio Grande.
After being arrested by the border patrol, he became one of the migrants who boarded buses chartered by the governor of Texas, the ultra Greg Abbott, and sent to progressive cities that offer refuge to undocumented immigrants, especially Nueva York, which in one year has welcomed more than 100,000 people.
For some time now, in the Big Apple subway you can see many mothers with children selling sweets, women on the corners of the Hispanic neighborhood of Corona (Queens) demanding or offering sex, or groups of men sitting on benches waiting for sex. Someone offers them a job.
The shelters are overflowing – to the detriment of the usual legions of homeless people – and camps are set up. A hotel like the Roosevelt, in the middle of Manhattan, which still retains the chandeliers of a time of splendor and victim of the pandemic crisis, has been transformed into a kind of Ellis Island of the 21st century, where people receive, “process” and shelters these immigrants, again, mostly escapees from the Nicolás Maduro regime.
Randy and many like him are part of the 60,000 migrants and compatriots in the Big Apple who will soon be able to legally begin applying for work and leaving publicly funded shelters. They are part of that contingent of beneficiaries of an expired measure, similar to that adopted with other countries that suffered catastrophes, and that the Administration justifies by the worsening of conditions in Venezuela.
There is debate as to whether this decision will cause a pull effect. Republicans do not doubt it and speak of “amnesty for those who entered illegally.” The Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, replied that anyone who arrived after July 31 will be deported. And immigration experts do not establish a link between temporary protection and increased immigration. So it all depends on who and how you look.
