Photo: REBECCA NOBLE/AFP/Getty Images
Representatives of pro-immigrant organizations rejected this Tuesday in Miami that the immigration program that grants humanitarian visas to 30,000 Cubans, Venezuelans, Haitians and Nicaraguans per month supposes an economic burden for the receiving states and argued that, on the contrary, It will be a contribution to the public coffers.
The Florida director of the American Business Immigration Coalition, Venezuelan Samuel Vilchez Santiago, He described as a “common sense solution” the so-called humanitarian “parole” in favor of the nationals of those four nations that the Administration of the President of the United States, Joe Biden, launched at the beginning of January.
The humanitarian parole program provides a pathway for safe and legal migration, strengthens our economy, and solves part of our border crisis. It is a win-win. And it also draws from our history of being a compassionate nation. Shame on those seeking to end it.
— Samuel Vilchez Santiago (@samuelvilchezs) January 27, 2023
“This program offers a path for immigrants to enter the labor force,” which is important in the midst of an economic context like the current one and at a time when the US is “short of labor in various sectors,” he added. Vilchez, one of the participants in a virtual teleconference organized by the Venezuela American Caucus.
The executive director of this organization, Adelys Ferroalluded to studies that reflect that “a large number of these immigrants who achieve legal status come to fill jobs that have been vacant for months.”
“So for recipient states, aid from an economic standpoint goes way beyond paying taxes,” he added.
“Our companies urgently need these new workers. Economically, it is the most sensible thing to do,” said Vilchez, who said that so far some 18,000 people have taken advantage of this program, with Venezuelans as the majority.
The United States announced on January 5 that it will accept 30,000 migrants a month from Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and Haiti, thus expanding a program through which humanitarian permits have been granted to Venezuelans since October.
To take advantage of this immigrant sponsorship program, which has been the subject of a lawsuit filed by attorneys general from 20 Republican states, applicants must meet certain requirements, including arriving by plane and having a sponsor in the US. that can give them support and financial support.
“We see with pain how the program is used as a political weapon by Republican leaders,” lamented María Antonieta Díaz, president of the Venezuelan American Alliance and sponsor, along with her husband, of some 20 people through this program.
He pointed out that from his experience he has been able to verify how “giving a person an opportunity has a positive and immense impact on relatives who stay in Venezuela, who benefit from remittances.”
In the case of Venezuela, a country in which “a profound humanitarian crisis” has caused the exodus of 7.1 million people, one of the largest migrations of nationals of a country, Díaz highlighted that the program has reunited families and has given them opportunities for a better life.
In turn, the Cuban-American Ana Sofía Peláez, co-founder of the Miami Freedom Project organization, said that the lawsuit by the Republican prosecutors “will only add more chaos and confusion to an already complex process.”
Vilchez and Maureen Porras, councilwoman for the city of Doral, which is home to one of the largest diasporas of Venezuelans in the US, alluded to the reduction in the number of irregular immigrants arriving from those four countries, which fell in January by more than 90% compared to December.
The program “has saved lives, as it prevents people from taking a path that can be fatal,” Porras, also an immigration attorney, toldfighting the routes that migrants take to cross the southern border of the United States.
In early January, President Biden also announced that his country was going to return nationals from Nicaragua, Cuba and Haiti to Mexico, thus expanding the use of a controversial rule called Title 42inherited from former President Donald Trump (2017-2021), a measure that may also explain the decline in the irregular arrival of these immigrants.
Tessa Petit, executive director of the Florida Immigrant Coalition, said that while “it’s not perfect,” the program is “good news for Haitians,” who have migrated in greater numbers to the United States in recent years, in Special to Florida.
Ferro, from the Venezuela American Caucus, emphasized that it is false that those who come to the US through this humanitarian program receive financial aid from the government, while Díaz, from the Venezuelan American Alliance, said that those who take refuge are a minority. to social assistance programs.
With information from EFE