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Last week a new record for immigration hypocrisy was broken. Democrats and progressive media demonized Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ send of migrants to the exclusive island of Martha’s Vineyard.
The usual loser, Nikki Fried, called for DeSantis to be investigated for alleged human trafficking. California Governor Gavin Newsom also went on the offensive, claiming that the Florida governor was profiting from child trafficking at the border. And Ocasio-Cortez devoted a lot of fake tears in the form of tweets to claim that the millionaire residents of Martha’s Vineyard had shown their mettle by “welcoming” the migrants, even though within 24 hours, the National Guard was already on the island to remove them.
As a Venezuelan and, above all, a migrant in this country, it would be ridiculous, to say the least, to oppose migration. But the issue is the forms and also the purposes. It is well known that Venezuelans are escaping from a socialist dictatorship and that most of our population are honest, good and hard-working people, victims of a murderous regime. However, we cannot ignore the send of criminal groups by Maduro’s tyranny —something that has even been reflected in an intelligence report of the Department of Homeland Security. So the least we could ask from those who migrate legally is that those who come after us comply with the legal processes and pass security filters, with the purpose of filtering people with intention of harming this country which creates a consequence of damaging the reputation of Venezuelans in the world.
That said, the progressive hypocrisy could not be more absurd. They promote illegal migration as long as they don’t have to take care of the migrants. To reflect this with statistics: the progressive elite living on Martha’s Vineyard declared a “humanitarian crisis” over the arrival of 50 migrants on their island of 17,000 and expelled them within 24 hours. In Del Rio, Texas, a border town with far fewer resources and 34,584 inhabitants, there have been 49,563 encounters with migrants. That is, the number of illegal migrants is greater than the population of Del Rio, unlike what happened in Martha’s Vineyard, the National Guard has not arrived to “evacuate” the area as it did on the Massachusetts island.
It is very easy to be a “friend” of the migrants from the outside, the hard part is dealing with the situation. Democrats in Washington and New York call for open borders. Still, when they receive less than 1% of the migration Texas receives, they declare a humanitarian crisis and demonize the saturated populations for sending them a tiny part of what they receive daily.
Regardless of your position on immigration policy, you should reject the hypocrisy of those who promote chaos that they expect others to resolve. If progressive humanists want open borders, let them lead by example, move to the borders and open their homes to refugees from all over the world.
Emmanuel Rincón is a lawyer, writer, novelist and essayist. He has won several international literary awards. He is Editor-at-large at El American // Emmanuel Rincón es abogado, escritor, novelista y ensayista. Ganador de diversos premios literarios internacionales. Es editor-at-large en El American