the republican strategy of pressure

First modification: 08/10/2022 – 22:26

They are not the first but they will not be the last either. Three buses arrived in New York this Wednesday, August 10, with about a hundred irregular migrants who were in the city after a forty-hour journey from the southern state of Texas. In exchange for a free ticket, they have become pawns in a chess game between US Republicans and Democrats.

Getting off the buses, the migrants, most of them single Venezuelan men, although there were also some families, were greeted by Manuel Castro, commissioner for immigration affairs of New York Democratic Mayor Eric Adams. “New York City is here to support asylum seekers who are arriving,” the politician told reporters.

Castro sharply criticized the governor of Texas, Republican Greg Abbot, who is behind these bus trips: “He is doing it to incite anti-immigration sentiment, but New York will not fall for it.”

For his part, Abbott defends that the arrival of migrants from Mexico to Texas and along the entire southern border of the United States is a problem that falls on the federal government.

“Mayor Adams has no idea what we see every day at our border. Despite his sanctuary city policy, New York cannot manage even a fraction of the chaos that Biden has created. This should be a red flag for the Administration.” Biden, to do his job and secure the border,” he tweeted.

The authorities of the Big Apple assure that their reception centers are overwhelmed with the more than 4,000 migrants who have arrived since May and announced that they will open new specialized centers to contain the situation.

More than 7,000 migrants displaced in this way

This Republican pressure strategy began months ago, with multiple shipments of buses full of migrants to Washington DC, the US capital. Texas has already moved more than 6,200 people to that city; and Arizona, another Republican governor state, about a thousand.

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For just over a week, Abbott’s new target has been New York, a sanctuary city, which means that it does not actively pursue undocumented migrants to allow them access to public services, but that it does not necessarily offer greater possibilities to people who they arrive.

But in the sights of the Republican governor is, especially, the federal government of Democrat Joe Biden, whom he accuses of encouraging the arrival of migrants and asylum seekers and not helping to manage the situation in the first host states such as Texas.

Meanwhile, a large part of the thousands of displaced irregular migrants end up sleeping on the streets and in cities where they have no support network of family or friends. In fact, the New York mayor’s office attributes a 10% increase in the homeless population since May to the arrival of these people.

Biden’s arrival at the White House made many think, especially migrants, that moving to the United States in search of better living conditions would be easier.

But the expectations and the reality have been different: despite the fact that the Democrat eliminated some of the harshest policies of the Trump Administration, such as the separation of families at the border, Title 42 has remained in force since the start of the pandemic, a controversial law that allows migrants to be rejected for health reasons.

Since October 2021, the United States has detained more than 1.7 million people on the border with Mexico, a figure not recorded since 1960.

With AFP and local media