by MARGARET KIMBERLEY
Immigration rules are often determined by U.S. foreign policy. Citizens of nations under U.S. attack, such as Venezuela, are made eligible for asylum. Haitians suffer under U.S. dictates but are deported and returned to the hell that Washington created.
Every day the republican governors of Texas, Greg Abbott, and Florida, Ron DeSantis, eagerly announce that they are sending people generically labeled as migrants to what are known as sanctuary cities. The corporate media report that thousands of people have been convinced to board buses to New York City or Washington DC or Sacramento or Chicago or even chartered flights to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. What they don’t explain is who these migrants are and why their status is highly problematic and a function of imperialist foreign policy.
Republicans rail against what are called sanctuary cities and imply that federal law doesn’t apply in these places or that undocumented people get some sort of special deal. However, the term sanctuary city doesn’t really mean very much. In New York it means that the city government and its employees will not assist in the deportation process. It does not mean that no one is ever deported or that federal rules don’t apply. Undocumented people are eligible for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and other benefits only under very limited circumstances and applying in a sanctuary city doesn’t change that fact. The media cannot seem to disseminate this easily provable information and people in this country are whipped into a frenzy over non-issues.
But there is a larger issue at work here that also goes unaddressed. The people taken to Martha’s Vineyard have made legal requests for asylum, which may be granted because of U.S. policy against their home country of Venezuela. Migrants from nations targeted by the U.S. are automatically eligible for asylum. In this hemisphere Venezuelans, Cubans, and Nicaraguans are likely to be granted asylum because the U.S. doesn’t like their governments. Ukrainians are favored because the U.S. supports their government’s role in attacking Russia and they are also given asylum when they arrive at the border. Some 100,000 Ukrainians have arrived here since February 2022.
Conversely, Haitians are routinely deported. Their country is in worse shape than any of the others mentioned and entirely because of U.S. interference in their sovereign rights. In 2010 the Obama administration even ordered Haiti to hold an election twice because they didn’t like the initial result. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton famously pressured the Haitian government to lower the already low minimum wage there. Now the U.S. orders the current illegitimate president Ariel Henry to enact austerity programs that create misery. The U.S. coups, UN occupations and other interventions have made Haiti unlivable.
But the Joe Biden administration has no sympathy for Haitians fleeing the problems of U.S making. As of February 2022 more than 19,000 Haitians were deported in the first year of Biden’s term. That figure is more than three times the number deported in the last three administrations combined.
Not only do Abbott and DeSantis lie about who they are sending around the country, but no one in the media calls them out on their subterfuge. They are scoring points by claiming to send undocumented people when they are in fact sending people who under international law have a legal right to request asylum in the U.S.
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