Venezuela | Reason ArchivesThe leading libertarian magazine and covering news, politics, culture, and more with reporting and analysis.(c) Reason
2024-03-29T07:30:15Z https://reason.com/feed/atom/WordPressCésar Báezhttps://reason.com/people/cesar-baez/https://reason.com/?p=82695222024-03-19T19:19:56Z2024-03-19T19:25:18Z
It's no surprise that the satirical news outlet El Chigüire Bipolar is funnier than The Onion and The Babylon Bee. It has a big advantage. El Chigüire Bipolar chronicles life in Venezuela, a nation destroyed by Hugo Chávez's socialist revolution, where even straight news often reads like satire. It's a country that, since Chávez's death in 2013, has been run by Nicolás Maduro, an oafish, thick-mustached dictator, with none of his predecessors' charm, charisma, or political intuition.
He not only sounds like a cartoon character, he actually is one, starring in a government-produced series called Super Bigote (translation: "Giant Mustache"), in which his avatar wears an iron fist and blue cape, thwarting the evil plots carried out by American imperialists, such as an electromagnetic attack to wipe out Venezuela's electric grid. (Yes, this was the Maduro regime's official explanation for the crippling 2019 nationwide blackout.)
El Chigüire Bipolar derives its name from the capybara ("el chigüire" in Spanish), a large rodent endemic to South America and a delicacy. (Chávez enjoyed it.) The term bipolar means the same as it does in English: manic-depressive.
El Chigüire Bipolar was founded by Juan Andrés Ravell, Elio Casale, and Oswaldo Graziani, who met in Caracas while sharing an office in the mid-aughts. Graziani and Ravell worked together on an animated series at Sony but were bristling under a lack of creative freedom. They teamed up with Casale to make Presidential Island, a cartoon series on YouTube that went viral in 2010, featuring the leaders of several Latin American countries partying together on a luxury yacht that gets shipwrecked, leaving them struggling to survive on a desert island.
They launched El Chigüire Bipolaron Blogspot, but it wasn't until they started posting their content to X (then known as Twitter) that the project spread like an "atomic bomb," Ravell recounted in an interview. Serving as a contributor for the site has since become an essential career stop for Venezuela's up-and-coming comedians.
Today there's no free press left in Venezuela. Chávez started shutting down newspapers and television stations in the mid-aughts. Eventually, criticizing the government meant bearing the risk of imprisonment and torture. News sites migrated abroad, including El Chigüire Bipolar—for the most part. The site's founders live in the United States, but the company that publishes the site is still based in Venezuela, along with many of its contributors.
So is El Chigüire Bipolar impervious to efforts by the Maduro regime to censor its content? That's currently being tested.
In November of last year, it published a story under the headline: "Diosdado congratulates Peruvian police for their performance against the Vinotinto." Diosdado Cabello is a former military officer, the country's second most powerful person, and the architect of many of Venezuela's most repressive policies. He played a direct role in the destruction of the free press, including suing El Nacional, one of Venezuela's oldest and most respected newspapers, into oblivion. As a former Chávez lackey turned influential party official, Cabello enjoys immense privileges, including hosting his own weekly late-night show on state television, Con El Mazo Dando, which awkwardly translates to "striking with a mallet."
Cabello is also head of the Special Command for Peace, an umbrella organization that coordinates Venezuelan's paramilitary squads, better known as colectivos. These repressive squads are responsible for violence against dissidents and controlling communities through terror. Vinotinto is Venezuela's national soccer team, and during the World Cup qualifier in Peru, a player was allegedly hit by the Peruvian police with a baton when trying to approach his fans.
"It gives me such nostalgia," El Chigüire Bipolar jokingly quoted Cabello as saying in response to the incident. "I remember how I used to break Julio Borges' nose every week with one of the chairs in the [National Assembly] chamber." (In 2013, Borges, an opposition leader, was injured in a congressional brawl.)
Cabello, who has been sanctioned by the United States and the European Union for human rights violations and corruption, often rails against perceived enemies of the socialist revolution on his broadcast. The joke about him congratulating Peruvian police apparently struck a nerve. On an episode of his show that aired on November 22, 2023, Cabello threatened El Chigüire Bipolar with legal action and implied that the founders would find themselves in tears in front of a judge. "This isn't a joke," he said. "They did it with the intention of spreading hate."
The repercussions of Cabello's threat aren't clear, and when contacted by Reason, a spokesperson for El Chigüire Bipolar declined to comment. The site hasn't mentioned Cabello in any of its coverage since the offending headline was published. Though the original article is still live online, its associated image is gone.
There are plenty of news sites doing real journalism about Venezuela from the safety of other countries, including Armando.Info, VPITV, and Monitoreamos. But El Chigüire Bipolar best captures the spirit of what the country has become, because it's nearly impossible to describe what's happened in Venezuela in straight prose.
Reason immigration writer Fiona Harrigan has a valuable new article surveying the growth of private migrant sponsorship over the last two years:
The two African refugees arrived in Oneonta, New York—a quaint, upstate college town of just over 12,000 people—in summer 2023. By then a group of volunteers had been preparing for them for "six, seven, eight years."
Mark Wolff, communication chair of The Otsego Refugee Resettlement Coalition (ORRC), says his group had to put its hopes of helping refugees on hold during the Trump administration, which cut the refugee cap to its lowest level ever. Even after Joe Biden's inauguration, with promises of a more humane immigration policy on the horizon, things didn't look good for their plan…
The ORRC had already begun to raise money and identify community partners. It had done its homework and it had momentum. So when the Biden administration announced the Welcome Corps—an initiative that would let private citizens take the lead on sponsoring and supporting refugees, rather than the longstanding government-led approach—the coalition knew it had found its way to welcome newcomers. "We were one of the first [private sponsor groups] in the United States to get approval," Wolff says…..
The Welcome Corps is one of several private sponsorship schemes to be rolled out in the last three years. From the Sponsor Circle Program for Afghans to Uniting for Ukraine to a program specifically for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans (CHNV), Americans who are moved by scenes of suffering around the world can put those feelings into action.
Wolff's sentiment speaks to the promise of these young private sponsorship schemes: getting more Americans directly involved in the welcoming process, getting newcomers to the point of self-sufficiency more quickly, and improving outcomes for immigrant and native communities alike. At a time when Americans are increasingly concerned about migration into the country, these community-driven approaches could be key to rebuilding trust in both immigrants and immigration.
As Harrigan recounts in detail, the new private sponsorship programs—beginning with Uniting for Ukraine (in which I am a sponsor myself)—have enabled hundreds of thousands migrants fleeing oppression and war enter the United States much faster than the traditional government-driven refugee system, and at little cost to the public fisc. By giving migrants an alternative legal way to enter the US, they have also reduced congestion and disorder at the southern border. Overall, these programs are the Biden Administration's biggest and most successful immigration policy innovation.
But, as Fiona also notes, the programs have important limitations. All were established through the exercise of executive discretion, which means the next president could potentially terminate them at any time. That's a highly likely scenario if the next president turns out to be Donald Trump. Ideally, Congress would enact legislation preventing the executive from taking such action.
In addition, participants in most of these programs are only granted temporary residency and work permits (two years in the case of CNVH and Uniting for Ukraine, though participants in latter can now apply for two-year extensions, as can Afghan parolees). For reasons Fiona describes, it would be better if these rights were permanent.
The only private sponsorship program that does grant permanent residency rights is Welcome Corps. But participants are required to meet the absurdly narrow legal definition of "refugee" to be eligible. Congress could potentially fix this problem by expanding the definition.
Sadly, given the current political environment, it's unlikely Congress will successfully address any of these issues in the near future. The long-run fate of the new private sponsorship programs may well depend on the outcome of the 2024 election.
Today, federal District Court Judge Drew Tipton issued a ruling in Texas v. Department of Homeland Security, rejecting a suit filed by a coalition of red states led by Texas, challenging the legality of the Biden Administration's CNVH parole program (also sometimes called "CHNV"), which allows migrants from four Latin American countries to enter the United States and live and work here for up to two years, if they can find a US-resident sponsor willing to support them.
Judge Tipton (a conservative Trump appointee) ruled that the states lacked standing to bring a lawsuit challenging the program. The plaintiff states argued Texas has standing because parolee migrants entering the state would lead the state government to incur various additional costs, thereby proving the necessary "injury in fact" required by Supreme Court standing precedent. But Judge Tipton concluded the evidence shows that the CNVH program actually reduces the number of migrants from these countries who enter the state. Thus, it doesn't increase the costs borne by the state, and therefore Texas hasn't suffered an "injury" sufficient to get standing:
To prove an injury in fact, Texas must show "an invasion of a legally protected interest which is (a) concrete and particularized, and (b) actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical." Lujan, 504 U.S. at 560, 112 S.Ct. at 2136…. In the context of state challenges to federal immigration policies, states have historically proven injury-in-fact by demonstrating the additional costs paid across state-funded industries because of additional aliens….
Texas's theory for standing "was based on allegations that the CHNV processes were likely to increase the number of CHNV nationals in the State and thus increase the State's costs…." And as observed by Intervenors [a group of sponsors of CHNV participants], the trial record disproves this theory…. Intervenors argue that the undisputed data presented at trial confirms that the CHNV Parole Program has reduced the total number of individuals from the four countries, and consequently, Texas has actually spent less money as a result of the Program….
Judge Tipton canvasses the relevant Supreme Court and Fifth Circuit court of appeals precedent and finds that the right way to measure costs is to consider the net impact of the program in question, not just the costs that may be created by program beneficiaries taken in isolation. Since the evidence shows the program reduces the total number of CNVH migrants in Texas, it actually saves Texas money, and thus the state lacks standing. Earlier in the litigation, the state plaintiffs stipulated that only Texas's costs were to be considered, not those of the other states.
How does the CNVH parole program actually reduce the number of migrants from these four countries entering Texas? Because it allows program participants to come to the US legally without ever having to cross the southern border, many migrants who might otherwise have tried to enter Texas or other border states illegally instead seek legal entry under CNVH. Many go directly to their final destinations in other states by ship, plane, or other means of transportation. Even those who do enter through border states might not stay there very long.
I covered this point in much more detail in an amicus brief I filed defending the legality of the program, on behalf of the Cato Institute, MedGlobal (a medical non-profit serving migrants and refugees, among others), and myself. Our brief does not address standing. But, for reasons explained in the brief, the alleviation of pressure on the border also matters for the merits of the case (which Judge Tipton didn't reach). See also my September 2023 article about the case in the Hill.
I am skeptical of narrow definitions of standing and would have preferred the court to uphold the CNVH program on the merits. However, Judge Tipton does make a good argument that this is the right result under current standing precedent. It is also broadly consistent with the Supreme Court's June 2023 8-1 decision in United States v. Texas, holding that many of the same red states that brought this case lack standing to challenge the Biden administration's immigration enforcement guidelines, even though the states argued that the administration's decision not to deport certain migrants increases states' costs (though there are also ways to potentially distinguish the two cases).
As David Bier and I explain in a November USA Today article, CNVH could do even more to alleviate border problems—and help migrants fleeing horrific oppression and violence—if the Biden administration were to expand it to cover more countries, and lift the arbitrary 30,000 per month cap on the number of participants. The cap has created a massive backlog of applicants.
And, while it may not be relevant to standing analysis (because of the indirect nature of such effects), the economic benefits of increased migration generally outweigh any additional costs to state and federal governments, especially given the immigrants also pay taxes.
This decision is likely to be appealed to the Fifth Circuit. Alternatively, the states might try to find some other way to get standing. The latter, however, may prove difficult if Judge Tipton's ruling stands. For the moment, however, the CNVH program can continue.
This case likely isn't over. But it's not a good sign for the states that they lost in district court despite the fact they chose to file in this district specifically because they were likely get Judge Tipton to hear the case. He's a conservative whom many observers expected to be sympathetic to the states' position.
NOTE: As indicated above, I filed an amicus brief in this case defending the legality of the program, on behalf of the Cato Institute, MedGlobal, and myself. However, the brief does not address the issue of standing. What I write on that question represents solely my own views, and not those of Cato, MedGlobal, or anyone else.
I am, as discussed in the brief, a sponsor in the Uniting for Ukraine program, which is based on the same statutory authority as CNVH, but was not challenged by plaintiff states.
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Venezuelans fleeing the socialist regime of Nicolas Maduro.John Stosselhttps://reason.com/people/john-stossel/https://reason.com/?p=82636722024-01-31T13:12:08Z2024-01-31T05:30:32Z
Javier Milei campaigned with a chainsaw, promising to cut the size of government.
Argentina's leftists had so clogged the country's economic arteries with regulations that what once was one of the world's richest countries is now one of the poorest.
Inflation is more than 200 percent.
People save their whole lives—and then find their savings worth nearly nothing.
Milei understands that government can't create wealth.
He surprised diplomats at the World Economic Forum this month by saying, "The state is the problem!"
He spoke up for capitalism: "Do not be intimidated by the political caste or by parasites who live off the state…. If you make money, it's because you offer a better product at a better price, thereby contributing to general well-being. Do not surrender to the advance of the state. The state is not the solution."
Go, Milei! I wish current American politicians talked that way.
In the West, young people turn socialist. In Argentina, they live under socialist policies. They voted for Milei.
Sixty-nine percent of voters under 25 voted for him. That helped him win by a whopping 3 million votes.
He won promising to reverse "decades of decadence." He told the Economic Forum, "If measures are adopted that hinder the free functioning of markets, competition, price systems, trade, and ownership of private property, the only possible fate is poverty."
Right.
Poor countries demonstrate that again and again.
The media say Milei will never pass his reforms, and leftists may yet stop him.
But already, "He was able to repeal rent controls, price controls," says economist Daniel Di Martino in my new video. He points out that Milei already "eliminated all restrictions on exports and imports, all with one sign of a pen."
"He can just do that without Congress?" I ask.
"The president of Argentina has a lot more power than the president of the United States."
Milei also loosened rules limiting where airlines can fly.
"Now [some] air fares are cheaper than bus fares!" says Di Martino.
He scrapped laws that say, "Buy in Argentina." I point out that America has "Buy America" rules.
"It only makes poor people poorer because it increases costs!" Di Martino replies, "Why shouldn't Argentinians be able to buy Brazilian pencils or Chilean grapes?"
"To support Argentina," I push back.
"Guess what?" Says Di Martino, "Not every country is able to produce everything at the lowest cost. Imagine if you had to produce bananas in America."
Argentina's leftist governments tried to control pretty much everything.
"The regulations were such that everything not explicitly legal was illegal," laughs Di Martino. "Now…everything not illegal is legal."
One government agency Milei demoted was a "Department for Women, Gender and Diversity." DiMartino says that reminds him of Venezuela's Vice Ministry for Supreme Social Happiness. "These agencies exist just so government officials can hire their cronies."
Cutting government jobs and subsidies for interest groups is risky for vote-seeking politicians. There are often riots in countries when politicians cut subsidies. Sometimes politicians get voted out. Or jailed.
"What's incredible about Milei," notes Di Martino, "is that he was able to win on the promise of cutting subsidies."
That is remarkable. Why would Argentinians vote for cuts?
"Argentinians are fed up with the status quo," replies Di Martino.
Milei is an economist. He named his dogs after Milton Friedman, Murray Rothbard, and Robert Lucas, all libertarian economists.
I point out that most Americans don't know who those men were.
"The fact that he's naming his dogs after these famous economists," replies Di Martino, "shows that he's really a nerd. It's a good thing to have an economics nerd president of a country."
"What can Americans learn from Argentina?"
"Keep America prosperous. So we never are in the spot of Argentina in the first place. That requires free markets."
Yes.
Actually, free markets plus rule of law. When people have those things, prosperity happens.
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John Stossel is seen next to Argentinian President Javier MileiNatalie Dowzickyhttps://reason.com/people/natalie-dowzicky-2/natalie.dowzicky@reason.comhttps://reason.com/?p=82523492023-10-19T17:54:04Z2023-10-19T17:10:27Z
During the MLB playoffs, when someone hits a home run or pitches a strikeout, he often looks to his family in the stands to celebrate. Philadelphia Phillies' Nick Castellanos' son, Liam, is practically part of the team since the camera pans to his reaction every time his dad hits a home run. But relief pitcher José Alvarado has thrown 82 pitches so far this postseason for the Phillies—and his mother and children haven't been able to see a single one. And the United States' immigration system is to blame.
Born in Maracaibo, Venezuela, Alvarado dropped out of school at age 14 to help his family manage their farm. He originally took a liking to soccer, but, left-handed, he learned he had an advantage as a baseball pitcher. Alvarado made his MLB debut in 2017 with the Tampa Bay Rays and was traded to the Phillies in 2020. That year was the last time he was able to hug his children. His mother and two of his three children had visas that expired in 2020.
"It's a lot of pressure," Alvarado toldThe Philadelphia Inquirer. "I want to help. I worry about her, I worry about my kids. I just want to be with my family."
The visa renewal process for Venezuelans (or any immigrants, for that matter) is in no way, shape, or form simple—even when you have all the resources of a professional athlete at your fingertips. Back in 2019, the U.S withdrew diplomatic personnel from the embassy in Caracas. To make matters worse, Venezuela is designated as a "Level 4: Do Not Travel" country by the State Department because of "crime, civil unrest, kidnapping, and the arbitrary enforcement of local laws."
This means that Alvarado's family would need to travel to another country's embassy in order to obtain new visas. First, they tried the U.S. embassy in Colombia and were denied. Then Alvarado paid for them to travel to Brazil, where they were denied again. Alvarado's family is blessed to have resources—but most immigrants wishing to come to the U.S. don't have the ability to travel to multiple countries and pay thousands of dollars to apply for visas just to get denied.
The Biden administration continues to try to address the record number of Venezuelans wanting to enter the U.S. in a variety of ways, but it hasn't been enough. Earlier this year, the administration launched a program to allow Venezuelans to fly into the country legally if they had an American sponsor. Cubans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans have since been added to that program—but, unfortunately, it caps out at 30,000 people per month. That's simply not enough.
Recently some international players have even asked to leave professional teams because they can't find a way to get their families into the United States. If it is this hard for professional athletes' families to get into the U.S., there's little hope for immigrants who don't have access to such tremendous resources. Hopefully Alvarado's family can obtain visas in time to see him become one of the best closers in baseball—a monumental accomplishment that deserves to be celebrated with loved ones.
The U.S. is resuming direct repatriation flights for Venezuelans who unlawfully cross the border and "do not establish a legal basis to remain" in the country, the Biden administration announced Thursday.
The Venezuelan government has agreed to take back deported migrants, a senior administration official said.
The effect of this policy is to forcibly return migrants back to the control of a brutal socialist dictatorship whose oppressive policies and human rights violations have resulted in the largest refugee crisis in the history of the Western Hemisphere, with some 7 million people fleeing since 2015.
That isn't just my evaluation of the situation in Venezuela. The Biden Administration itself recognized these realities when it recently expanded Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Venezuelans who arrived in the US prior to July 31, 2023. TPS status is based on the presence of terrible conditions in the migrants' countries of origin. In January, the administration also allowed up to 30,000 migrants per month from four Latin American countries (including Venezuela) to enter the United States under the CNVH parole program, so long as they have US-resident sponsors. The parole program is also based, in part on Venezuelan migrants' "urgent humanitarian reasons" for needing refuge.
In this respect, there is no meaningful distinction between Venezuelans who arrived before July 31, and those who arrived since then. The Venezuelan government hasn't suddenly changed. The excuse that the migrants in question "don't have a legal basis to remain" also won't fly. The legality of their status depends in large part on the Administration's own actions in using (or not using) its parole and TPS powers. If the White House wanted to, it could easily expand parole, TPS, or both to encompass additional Venezuelan victims of socialist tyranny.
While the US government isn't responsible for the awful conditions in Venezuela, it is morally responsible for its own actions in forcibly preventing refugees from escaping those conditions. It is unjust to use coercion to consign people to a lifetime of poverty and oppression merely because they were born in the wrong place, to the wrong parents.
In a better world, Republicans would be up in arms about the administration's abusive actions towards migrants fleeing socialism. GOP leaders—including those behind an ill-conceived lawsuit challenging the legality of the CNVH program—well know the nature of the Venezuelan regime. As Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said last year, Venezuela's socialist president Nicolas Maduro is a "murderous tyrant" who "is responsible for countless atrocities and has driven Venezuela into the ground." But in the Trump era-Republican Party, nativism usually takes precedence over fighting socialism, whenever the two conflict. Still, Republican hypocrisy on this point doesn't justify Biden's own.
The likely motive for Biden's new policy is political: trying to reduce negative publicity from illegal migration and disorder at the border. But that disorder is itself largely caused by the near-impossibility of legal entry for most of the migrants in question. The combination of horrific poverty and oppression in their home countries and labor shortages in the US understandably lead people seeking opportunity and freedom to enter illegally if there is no other way to do so.
It's the same dynamic by which alcohol prohibition led people to resort to smuggling, and to getting booze from the likes of Al Capone. Barring legal markets in goods or services millions of people seek access to predictably creates vast black markets. When Prohibition was abolished, alcohol smuggling and the role of organized crime in the industry greatly diminished. Making legal migration easier has similar effects on the black market in immigration.
For months, the CNVH program greatly reduced illegal entry by migrants from the four countries involved, a finding confirmed by both government data and a study by the conservative Manhattan Institute. More recently, that effect has diminished because the 30,000 per month cap has predictably led to a massive backlog. Desperate Venezuelans with little or no hope of legal entry once again have little choice but to try the other kind.
The Biden Administration could mitigate the problem by abolishing or at least greatly increasing the cap. They and Congress could also make legal entry easier in a variety of other ways. Doing so would simultaneously help migrants fleeing oppression, benefit the US economy (thereby increasing economic freedom, wealth, and opportunity for native-born Americans), and reduce pressure on the southern border. Instead, the White House has chosen the cruel and unjust path of unjust deportation.
Overall, Biden's immigration policies are still a vast improvement on those of his predecessor, and in some crucial respects even on those of pre-Trump administrations. Even in the specific case of Venezuelan migration, Biden remains much better than Trump. But that doesn't mean he deserves a pass when he does wrong in this area.
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Venezuelans fleeing the socialist regime of Nicolas Maduro.Fiona Harriganhttps://reason.com/people/fiona-harrigan/fiona.harrigan@reason.comhttps://reason.com/?p=82492262023-09-21T21:30:54Z2023-09-21T21:30:54Z
Yesterday, the Biden administration announced new actions to help get recent immigrants to work, including offering almost half a million Venezuelans a status that will let them live and work in the U.S. legally for the next 18 months. The new measures come at a critical time, as labor shortages persist and cities struggle to provide for newcomers.
Certain Venezuelan migrants are eligible for temporary protected status (TPS), a designation offered to migrants who can't safely return to their home countries due to armed conflict, environmental disaster, or another temporary safety hazard. Venezuela was first designated for TPS in 2021 due to a severe political and economic crisis perpetuated by Nicolás Maduro's regime. Under that designation, Venezuelans who came to the U.S. before March 2021 qualified for protection; now, the status will apply to Venezuelans who arrived before the end of July this year. There are currently 16 countries designated for TPS.
Roughly 472,000 Venezuelans are newly eligible for TPS, in addition to some 242,700 Venezuelans who were already eligible. TPS beneficiaries aren't removable, and importantly, they're given the opportunity to obtain work authorization.
Lack of work authorization for migrants has been a particular thorn in the side of Democratic politicians, including New York City Mayor Eric Adams. "Our administration and our partners across the city have led the calls to 'Let Them Work,'" Adams said following the Biden administration's announcement, calling the TPS designation an "important step." New York Gov. Kathy Hochul called it "one of our top priorities."
The Biden administration announced a raft of other immigration and border enforcement measures yesterday, including harsh actions like deploying military personnel to the border and expanding family deportations. But the new work measures are promising. Certain migrants—asylum seekers and refugees among them—will now be eligible for work permits that are good for five years, up from the current validity period of two years. This will mean fewer renewal applications and will "reduce the associated workload and processing times," per a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) press release.
The administration is also aiming for quicker review of work authorization requests filed by migrants who enter the country through mobile app appointments or through the private sponsorship program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans. DHS says it's aiming to improve the median processing time for those work authorization applications from 90 days to 30 days. U.S. immigration agencies have long struggled to efficiently process various kinds of applications, so it remains to be seen whether those improvements will happen.
However, in the absence of broader immigration reform spearheaded by Congress, these are welcome actions. Getting immigrants to work is an obvious economic good—the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicate there are 8.8 million job openings in the country—and it'll also reduce the burden of government spending. The Biden administration has sent nearly $770 million to localities to help fund services for new arrivals. Without a clear legal pathway to employment, many migrants simply wouldn't be able to provide for themselves and turn away from city-provided services. Encouraging migrant self-sufficiency is particularly important in New York City, which has a "right-to-shelter" law that has proven costly.
There's still much work to be done to reform the immigration system, reduce chaos at the border, and improve processing for the migrants who want to live peaceful and prosperous lives here. But the Biden administration deserves credit for its recent moves to help get migrants to work.
Yesterday, the Biden Administration granted Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to Venezuelans who arrived in the US up through July 31 of this year. TPS enables migrants to live and work in the US legally for 18 months. Up until now, TPS status was only available to Venezuelans who arrived before March 2021. The Department of Homeland Security estimates some 472,000 Venezuelans who did not previously have TPS status will now be eligible for it. Another 242,000 who already had TPS will now be able to extend it.
Biden recently extended TPS for Ukrainians in the United States, who of course have fled a horrific war and Russian aggression. The expansion for Venezuelans is a similar policy, albeit affecting many more people.
While the expansion of TPS for Venezuelans is a step in the right direction, it is not a substitute for passing a Venezuelan Adjustment Act, allowing Venezuelans to live and work in the US permanently, as has been done for many other groups fleeing war and oppressive socialist regimes in the past. The TPS extension will expire in 18 months, and a hostile president could potentially terminate it even earlier.
Permanent residency and work permits that do not depend on the whims of whoever occupies the White House would allow the Venezuelans and others to better plan and organize their lives, and to make greater contributions to our economy and society. I expanded on the advantages of adjustment acts for Venezuelans, Ukrainians, and other similarly situated groups here and here. Most recently, I urged the passage of the Afghan Adjustment Act, to give permanent residency to Afghans who fled to the US after the Taliban seized control of their county.
Judge Drew Tipton of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas is in the process of considering an important immigration lawsuit that could have tragic effects if the plaintiffs prevail. The trial, which ran between Aug. 24 and 25, involves an ill-conceived lawsuit brought by Texas and nineteen other GOP-controlled state governments attempting to shut down an immigration policy that simultaneously rescues people fleeing violence and oppression and relieves pressure on the southern border. Ironically, statements by the plaintiff states' own leaders show why they deserve to lose.
The legal basis for these private sponsorship programs is the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act, which…. gives the Department of Homeland Security the power to use "parole" to grant foreign citizens temporary residency rights in the United States "on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit." Here, we have both "urgent humanitarian reasons" and "significant public benefit."
The humanitarian need is undeniable. Three of the four nations included in the program — Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela — are ruled by oppressive socialist dictators, whose policies have created horrific conditions. Few have put it better than Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), whose state is one of the plaintiffs in the present case.
As he said last year, Venezuela's socialist president Nicolas Maduro is a "murderous tyrant" who "is responsible for countless atrocities and has driven Venezuela into the ground." Venezuelan oppression and socialist economic policies have created the biggest refugee crisis in the history of the Western hemisphere….
In 2021, DeSantis rightly described Cuba's communist regime as responsible for "poverty, starvation, migration, systemic lethal violence, and suppression of speech…."
The CNVH program also creates a significant "public benefit." In December, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott sent a public letter to President Biden urging him to immediately address what he called a "terrible crisis for border communities."
CNVH parole does exactly that. Many of the migrants seeking entry at the border came from the four nations covered by program. Parole enables them to instead enter with advance authorization by ship or plane, and thereby bypass the border entirely, thus alleviating the "crisis" of which Abbot complained. A report by the conservative Manhattan Institute finds that "[t]he CHNV parole program…. has reduced combined illegal immigration by more than 98,000 immigrants per month…."
If the states prevail in this case, it will have dire consequences going far beyond the CNVH program. It would also imperil Uniting for Ukraine, which relies on the same authority, and has granted entry to some 140,000 Ukrainians fleeing Russia's war of aggression.
In addition, it would make it difficult or impossible for presidents to use parole to aid migrants fleeing future wars and repressive regimes. This harms both migrants unable to escape awful conditions, and the U.S. economy… It also undermines the U.S. position in the international war of ideas of against oppressive dictatorships, like those of Cuba, Russia and Venezuela.
Welcoming migrants fleeing their governments is a powerful signal of the superiority of ours. Conservatives understood this point during the Cold War, when they supported the use of this same parole power to grant entry to Hungarian, Cuban, Vietnamese and other refugees from communism.
The article is partly based on an amicus brief I filed in the case on behalf of the Cato Institute, MedGlobal (a humanitarian medical organization), and myself.
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Venezuelans fleeing the socialist regime of Nicolas Maduro.Ilya Sominhttps://reason.com/people/ilya-somin/isomin@gmu.eduhttps://reason.com/?post_type=volokh-post&p=82438792023-07-31T22:56:46Z2023-07-31T22:56:46Z
Earlier today, I submitted an amicus brief to the US District Court for the Southern District of Texas in Texas v. Department of Homeland Security, a case challenging the legality of the CNVH immigration parole program. I wrote the brief on behalf of the Cato Institute, MedGlobal (a humanitarian organization that provides medical assistance to refugees and victims of natural disaster), and myself. Here is an excerpt from the summary of the brief posted on the Cato website:
In January, the Biden Administration adapted the approach used by the successful Uniting for Ukraine private migrant sponsorship program to include a combined total of up to 30,000 migrants per month from four Latin American countries: Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Haiti (the CNVH countries). Under these programs, migrants fleeing war, oppression, poverty, and violence in these countries can quickly gain legal entry into the United States and the right to live and work here for up to two years, if they have a private sponsor in the US who commits to supporting them.
Twenty GOP‐controlled states filed a lawsuit challenging the legality of the program for the four Latin American nations (though not Uniting for Ukraine). They claim the program lacks proper congressional authorization. Ironically, the flaws in the lawsuit are highlighted by the plaintiff state governors' own statements about the evils of socialism and the urgent need to address the crisis at the southern border….
The CNVH program is authorized by the Immigration and Nationality Act which states that "[t]he Attorney General may, except as provided in subparagraph (B) or in section 1184(f) of this title, in his discretion parole into the United States temporarily under such conditions as he may prescribe only on a case‐by‐case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit any alien applying for admission to the United States." 8 U.S.C. § 1182(d)(5)(A).
Part I of the brief demonstrated that migrants from the CNVH countries indeed have "urgent humanitarian reasons" to seek refuge in the United States. They are fleeing a combination of rampant violence, brutal oppression by authoritarian socialist regimes, and severe economic crises. So great is the humanitarian need here, that even the leaders of some of the plaintiff states have recognized and denounced the horrific conditions in these countries.
In Part II, we show that paroling CNVH migrants also creates a major "public benefit." That benefit is reducing pressure and disorder on America's southern border. Here, too, some of the Plaintiff states have themselves recognized the importance of this benefit, and indeed have loudly called for measures to achieve it. The CNVH program has already massively reduced cross‐border undocumented migration by citizens of the four nations it covers.
Part III explains why the parole program is consistent with the statutory requirement that parole be conducted on a "case by case basis." 8 U.S.C. § 1182(d)(5)(A). The Plaintiffs' position on this point is inconsistent with statutory text, Supreme Court precedent, and basic principles of statutory interpretation. It would also lead to absurd results.
Finally, Part IV shows that, while the Plaintiffs have limited their lawsuit to challenging the CNVH program, if the court accepts their position it would also imperil Uniting for Ukraine. The latter relies on the same legal authority as the former.
In sum, this ill‐conceived lawsuit deserves to fail for reasons well‐articulated by leaders of some of the very same states that filed it.
The CNVH program has already helped many thousands of migrants fleeing violence and socialist oppression, and has also had a big impact alleviating pressure on the southern border. A court decision shutting it down would be both legally unjustifiable, and likely to cause great harm.
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Venezuelans fleeing the socialist regime of Nicolas Maduro.Ilya Sominhttps://reason.com/people/ilya-somin/isomin@gmu.eduhttps://reason.com/?post_type=volokh-post&p=82409022023-07-01T19:59:09Z2023-07-01T19:59:09Z
C-SPAN has posted the video of yesterday's Cato Institute event on "Private Sponsorship: Revolution in Immigration Policy." The speakers were Prof. Adam Cox (NYU) (coauthor of the important book The President and Immigration Law), Kit Taintor (VP of Policy and Practice at Welcome.US, the leading organization connecting potential American sponsors with Ukrainian and other migrants eligible for sponsorship), David Bier (Cato Institute), and myself.
The video is available here. Unfortunately, I can't figure out how to embed it on this site.
Here's Cato's description of the event:
The Biden administration recently launched ambitious private sponsorship programs for Ukrainians, Venezuelans, Haitians, Cubans, and Nicaraguans, which could be the largest expansion of legal migration in decades. These initiatives create new legal opportunities for Americans to sponsor foreigners from these troubled countries for legal entry and residence in the United States. The new entry categories have already facilitated hundreds of thousands of legal entries and are helping reduce unlawful migration across the U.S.-Mexico border. What is the sponsorship experience like? How can the government improve upon these policies? What can be done to expand the program to immigrants from other countries? Explore these issues and others with Cato's panel of experts.
I have previously written about Uniting for Ukraine and other private sponsorship programs here, here, here, and here. While these initiatives have important limitations (most notably, the lack of a provision for permanent residency and work permits in most of them), they are on their way to becoming the largest expansion of legal immigration in a long time.
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John Stosselhttps://reason.com/people/john-stossel/https://reason.com/?p=82395282023-06-22T03:42:14Z2023-06-21T18:40:27Z
Politicians claim their bills bring us good things. Free health care! Child care! A cellphone for all!
But government isn't Santa Claus. Government is force.
Most every law takes away a little of our money or freedom or both.
The Heritage Foundation ranks economic freedom across the globe. The United States once ranked No. 4 in the world, but we've been in decline. This year, as my new video explains, we're 25th.
"If you care about living a prosperous life, you should care about what government economic policies are," says the Heritage Foundation's Derrick Morgan.
The foundation ranks countries' economic freedom based on things like rule of law, regulatory efficiency, open markets, fiscal health, etc.
The big reason the U.S. fell in the rankings is that Congress spends so much more money than government can squeeze out of us in taxes.
I say to Morgan, "'Free child care, free this, free that!' That sounds good for my freedom."
"Sooner or later, you run out of other people's money," Morgan responds. "More dollars chasing fewer goods leads to inflation," and inflation leaves us less financial freedom.
In addition, politicians ban some of our choices, like future natural gas hookups and gas-powered cars. Many want to ban contraception, TikTok, guns.
And on top of that, America's bureaucrats add thousands of regulations, most of which restrict individual freedom.
"Those are examples of our smothering government and why we keep dropping places," says Morgan.
The world's least free countries have even more smothering governments.
India ranks toward the bottom of the freedom list because Indian bureaucrats are empowered to decide whether entrepreneurs may try something new. Investors must get up to 70 different approvals. No wonder India stays poor.
It could be worse. The most repressed people in the world are trapped in countries at the bottom of the freedom list: Sudan, Venezuela, Cuba, and, of course, North Korea.
"It's bad in the economic sphere just as it is in the political sphere," says Morgan. "These things reinforce each other. The freer a country is economically, the better off they are."
Hong Kong was a great example of how economic freedom makes life better. In just 30 years, people there moved from poverty to prosperity.
It happened because Hong Kong's British rulers enforced rule of law but put few obstacles in the way of trying new things.
That allowed free people in Hong Kong to get rich and put Hong Kong at the top of many freedom rankings.
Then the British gave Hong Kong back to China. China promised to respect Hong Kong's open society, but a few years ago, China turned Hong Kong into another Chinese police state.
So Heritage dropped Hong Kong from its list. "We got to the point where we could no longer consider them separate from Communist China, sadly," says Morgan.
The freest countries on Heritage's list are Taiwan, Ireland, Switzerland, and Singapore.
But wait! Singapore doesn't have free speech. You can't criticize politicians or assemble without a police permit. They recently hanged some people for selling marijuana.
"Would you want to live in Singapore?" I ask Morgan.
"Your point is a good one," he responds. "This isn't a measure of freedom overall. It's a measure of economic freedom. Other freedoms are important, religious freedom…First Amendment freedom."
The Cato Institute's Human Freedom Index, which ranks both economic and personal freedom, lists Switzerland, New Zealand, Estonia, and Denmark as the freest countries. Singapore ranks 44th. America 23rd.
"Our point," explains Morgan, "is really to have a data longevity to look at. Does economic freedom over time lead to freer, more prosperous, healthier, and cleaner environments? It does."
That's something to remember next time politicians take away your choices or print more money.
"They're going to offer you free stuff," says Morgan. "It's all going to sound good…but their policies are in all likelihood going to make things worse."
Today is World Refugee Day. It's an appropriate time to remember the millions of refugees around the world. The refugee situation this year is even worse than usual, exacerbated by Russia's ongoing war of aggression against Ukraine, and the oppression inflicted by Venezuela's socialist government, each of which has led some 7 million people to flee.
In ordinary language, we use the term "refugee" to refer to anyone fleeing severe violence or oppression. But the legal definition of the term is far narrower, excluding many people fleeing truly horrific conditions. Only those meeting the narrow legal definition are entitled to refuge without threat of deportation under international law and the domestic law of most liberal democracies, including the US.
I wrote about the need to expand the legal definition on this date last year, and the issue is just as urgent today. Here is an excerpt (the original post goes into greater detail, and addresses a number of potential counterarguments):
The 1951 Refugee Convention (as later amended) bars governments from deporting refugees, defined as people whose "life or freedom would be threatened on account of [their] race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion." US law has a very similar definition.
This definition excludes vast numbers of people fleeing horrific violence and oppression. For example, it doesn't include the vast majority of North Koreans, subjects of the world's most repressive regime. For the most part, that government's victims are targets of what we might call "equal-opportunity oppression" doled out to almost everyone who lives under the regime's rule, not just to members of specific racial, ethnic, religious or other "social" groups. It doesn't even include people subjected to forced labor, as long as their enslavement wasn't based on any of the above prohibited characteristics…..
Even if terrorists or repressive governments target you personally, you still don't qualify for refugee status unless their motive was one of the criteria listed above…
Ideally, we should expand the definition of "refugee" to cover everyone fleeing violence, war, and repression, regardless of the oppressors' motives for targeting the person in question. If that isn't feasible, for political reasons, legal scholars and other experts have advanced a variety of proposals for incremental expansion of the "refugee" category….
In a recent post, I wrote about the bipartisan Venezuelan Adjustment Act currently before Congress, which would grant permanent residency rights to some 400,000 Venezuelans who came to the US fleeing their home country's brutal socialist dictatorship. As mentioned in that post, a Ukrainian Adjustment Act was also recently introduced by a different bipartisan group of members of the House of Representatives, Reps. Mike Quigley (D-IL), Bill Keating (D-MA), Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), and Marcy Kaptur (D-OH).
Unfortunately, unlike in the case of the Venezuelan Adjustment Act, the Ukrainian Act's official website doesn't include the text of the bill. So I don't know its exact scope, or whether it has any problematic limitations, such as the Venezuelan Act's restriction of permanent residency rights to those Venezuelans who entered the US on or before Dec. 31, 2021. Still, the summary put out in this press release by Rep. Quigley's office seems promising:
Following Russia's illegal, full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Biden Administration established the Uniting for Ukraine program which has provided a vital pathway for Ukrainian citizens and their immediate family members to temporarily reside and seek safety in the United States. Since February 2022, 271,000 Ukrainians have entered the U.S.—with over 117,000 having been admitted specifically under the Uniting for Ukraine program.
Given the prolonged nature of the conflict, those Ukrainians who have entered the U.S. remain under threat and are unable to return to their homes. The Ukrainian Adjustment Act would provide those Ukrainians who have been paroled into the U.S. since 2014 with permanent residency status, allowing them to work, contribute to society, and maintain a stable life in the U.S. until they are able to return home.
"The Ukrainian Adjustment Act builds on our work to aid Ukrainian refugees. These individuals have fled their homes and their families in the hopes of maintaining their freedom. They need our support and the chance to begin building a new life here in America," said Congressman Quigley. "Let this serve as a reminder that Ukrainian refugees are not the only group in need of permanent status. Those who aided our efforts in Afghanistan and have since fled are still waiting nearly two years after the withdrawal. Ukrainian and Afghan refugees have overcome immeasurable odds and devastation—they both deserve our help."
If the proposed Act indeed covers all Ukrainians admitted through parole since 2014, it will likely include the vast majority of Ukrainians currently in the US. But it might exclude some who entered prior to February of last year, and were admitted by other means, and later were allowed to stay after the Biden Administration, in March of last year, granted Temporary Protection Status (TPS) to Ukrainians in the United States at that time.
In the post about the Venezuelan Act, I included links to earlier writings summarizing the reasons reasons why granting permanent residency to Ukrainians, Venezuelans, and others fleeing horrific war and oppression is both morally right and serves US economic and foreign policy interests (see, e.g., here and here). In the same post, I also addressed the concern that it is unfair to grant permanent residency to Venezuelans or Ukrainians if we cannot simultaneously do the same for similarly situated migrants from elsewhere.
I will try to use my contacts learn more about the proposed Ukrainian Adjustment Act, and will post on it further when and if I do.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers has introduced the Venezuelan Adjustment Act to adjust the legal status for Venezuelan nationals. Florida Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R), who's promoted the Dignity Act, joins Democrats in looking to address pressing concerns regarding Venezuelan nationals. With Florida Reps. Darren Soto (D), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D), and Frederica Wilson (D), Salazar has introduced H.R. 4048.
According to a press release from Salazar's office, the bill "would adjust the legal status for certain Venezuelan nationals to that of lawfully admitted permanent residence if they meet certain criteria, including entering the United States before or on December 31, 2021."
Moreover, it "would provide a path to lawful permanent residency status to many Venezuelan nationals who have been living in the United States for years and allow them to continue making significant contributions to their communities, the state of Florida, and the country…."
Mildred Rodriguez, the CEO of My Voice Counts, praised the effort, commenting that the bill "will allow more than 400,000 Venezuelans who are fleeing an oppressive regime where totalitarianism prevails to obtain Permanent Residence…."
As Rep. Salazar (herself the daughter of Cuban refugees from communism), put it in her statement introducing the act, "The oppression of the Maduro regime and the failure of socialism of the 21st century has led to the world's worst refugee crisis. As a result, thousands of Venezuelans…. face an uncertain immigration situation and cannot return to Venezuela. I am proud to co-lead the Venezuelan Adjustment Act to provide refuge for those who have endured incredible suffering, so they do not have to return home to face the wrath of the dictatorship."
The poverty and oppression created by Venezuela's socialist government has caused over 7 million refugees to flee. It isn't entirely clear whether this really is the world's biggest current refugee crisis. Russia's invasion of Ukraine has led to the flight of a similar number of people. But the Venezuelan situation is certainly the biggest refugee crisis in the history of the Western Hemisphere.
Rep. Salazar and the other sponsors deserve credit for introducing this bill, and Congress should pass it. If enacted, it will help Venezuelan migrants in the US continue to escape deportation back to oppression, as opposed to being subject to the whims of the White House, where current and future presidents may or may not continue to extend the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) most of them currently enjoy. Granting permanent residency will also benefit American society as a whole, by enabling migrants to integrate into society more fully, and increase their contributions to the economy. I covered these and other advantages of passing adjustment acts in greater detail in an April article in the Boston Globe (non-paywall version here).
Some might wonder whether it is unfair to grant permanent residency to Venezuelans, but not migrants fleeing comparable violence and oppression elsewhere. Why Venezuelans, but not Cubans, Ukrainians, and others? It's a reasonable question. The answer is the same one I have given on several previous occasions (e.g. here and here).
Ideally, we should indeed extend residency rights to all similarly situated migrants fleeing poverty, war, and oppression. I have long advocated adjustment acts for Afghans, Cubans, Ukrainians, Russians fleeing Putin's regime, and other migrants in similar situations.. But the best should not be the enemy of the good. We should not forego an opportunity to help some refugees from oppression unless and until we can simultaneously help all.
To the extent there is inconsistency and unfairness, the right way to address it is "leveling up," not leveling down. Moreover, a successful Venezuelan Adjustment Act can potentially serve as a model for similar legislation applying to other groups. The US actually has a long history of passing adjustment acts granting permanent residency to other refugees from socialism. This legislation can help reinvigorate that tradition, after an unfortunate hiatus in recent years.
UPDATE: It's worth noting that there is already an Afghan Adjustment Act before Congress, albeit it hasn't passed, despite significant bipartisan support (including from Rep. Salazar, who is one of its sponsors). On June 8, a different bipartisan group of representatives introduced a Ukrainian Adjustment Act, which I will say more about in a future post.
On June 30, 12-1 PM, the Cato Institute will be holding an event on "Private Sponsorship: Revolution in Immigration Policy." The participants include Prof. Adam Cox (NYU) (coauthor of the important book The President and Immigration Law), Kit Taintor (VP of Policy and Practice at Welcome.US, the leading organization connecting potential American sponsors with Ukrainian and other migrants eligible for sponsorship), David Bier (Cato Institute), and myself.
Attendance is free and open to the public. You can come in person or watch online. Free registration at the event website here. Here is a description of the event:
The Biden administration recently launched ambitious private sponsorship programs for Ukrainians, Venezuelans, Haitians, Cubans, and Nicaraguans, which could be the largest expansion of legal migration in decades. These initiatives create new legal opportunities for Americans to sponsor foreigners from these troubled countries for legal entry and residence in the United States. The new entry categories have already facilitated hundreds of thousands of legal entries and are helping reduce unlawful migration across the U.S.-Mexico border. What is the sponsorship experience like? How can the government improve upon these policies? What can be done to expand the program to immigrants from other countries? Explore these issues and others with Cato's panel of experts.
Current private sponsorship programs started with Uniting for Ukraine in April of last year, but have since been expanded to include migrants from four other nations beset by violence and oppression, and a pilot program for people who fit the legal definition of "refugee." I have previously written about Uniting for Ukraine and other private sponsorship programs here, here, here, and here. While these initiatives have some limitations (most notably, the lack of a provision for permanent residency and work permits in most of them), they are likely to be the largest expansion of legal immigration for many years. Anyone interested in immigration law and policy would do well to pay attention to their development.
On January 5, the Biden Administration extended the private sponsorship migration system used by the successful Uniting for Ukraine program to include up to 30,000 migrants per month from four Latin American countries: Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela,and Haiti ("CNVH"). Migrants from these countries can quickly gain legal entry into the United States and the right to live and work here for up to two years, if they pass a simple background check and have a private sponsor in the US who commits to providing support.
In a March 30 post, I summarized evidence indicating that this program has significantly reduced illegal migration from the CNVH countries, and thereby reduced pressure on the southern border. It does so by offering potential migrants a way to enter legally that is preferable to the illegal route. A new study by Daniel Di Martino, published by the conservative Manhattan Institute, provides extensive new evidence documenting this dynamic. Di Martino's paper isn't the first analysis to reach the same conclusion. In addition to the early evidence referenced in my March post, we also Customs and Border Protection data indicating that between the announcement of the parole program on January 5 and March 31, average daily encounters outside ports of entry, with migrants from the four countries covered declined by 72%.
But Di Martino's assessment is the most thorough, sophisticated, and up-to-date study we have so far. And it is sponsored by a conservative organization that, to understate the point, isn't generally known for being supportive of either immigration liberalization or the Biden Administration. Here are excerpts from the author's summary of his findings and recommendations:
The Biden administration's parole programs are successfully reducing both illegal immigration and total immigration into the U.S., and they are shifting the composition of immigrants so that they are more self-sufficient and reliant on their existing social networks, rather than dependent on government assistance. Maintaining and improving parole will be even more important now that Title 42 has expired and the U.S. government has lost another tool for reducing illegal immigration.
The parole program for migrants from Venezuela began in October 2022 and expanded to Cuba, Haiti, and Nicaragua in January 2023. Approximately 102,000 people were paroled into the U.S. from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela (CHNV) from October 2022 until April 2023, the most recent numbers available. Through March 2023, the program has prevented the entry of more than 380,000 illegal immigrants into the United States….
The CHNV parole program is expected to admit up to 30,000 immigrants per month, but it has reduced combined illegal immigration by more than 98,000 immigrants per month. (The total is 30,000 admitted per month, for all four countries.) This reduces net migration into the U.S. by approximately 68,000 migrants every month, or up to 820,000 annually…..
To build on the success of these existing parole programs, this report makes the following recommendations:
The CHNV program could be improved by exempting parolees from filing a work-permit request form and authorizing them to work incident to status, as with Ukrainian and Afghan parolees.
USCIS should begin charging a cost-recovery fee for sponsors filing the required form I-134A to hire more personnel and not delay processing of other legal immigration applications that need its attention.
A rolling parole program targeting countries with high rates of illegal immigration to the U.S. could help reduce illegal immigration and perhaps even total immigration into the United States.
Di Martino also compiles evidence indicating that the Uniting for Ukraine has significantly reduced illegal migration across the southern border by Ukrainian citizens.
I agree with Di Martino's main conclusions about pressure on the border, and most of his policy recommendations, particularly expanding the parole system to cover more countries and simplifying the bureaucratic process for securing work permits. As a sponsor in the Uniting for Ukraine program, I can confirm from experience that the latter is a serious annoyance. However, I am not convinced the program will actually reduce total migration into the US in the longterm. If it continues, more people will make use of it over time, thereby potentially increasing migration, overall, at least the legal kind. Because of the 30,000 per month cap, it may take them longer to come. But come they likely will. I, of course, don't regard that as a bad thing.
I also disagree with the recommendation to impose a "cost-recovery fee" for I-134A forms. Social science evidence suggests that even modest bureaucratic obstacles can significantly reduce participation in various programs. Imposing a fee is likely to reduce the number of Americans willing to serve as sponsors, thereby diminishing the benefits of the program. People hate having to do paperwork, and they hate having to pay a fee for the "privilege" of doing it even more. The costs of processing the forms can instead be more than offset by the extra tax revenue produced by parolees who work in the US.
In my view, the really great benefits of Uniting for Ukraine and CNVH are enabling many thousands of people to escape war, violence, poverty and oppression, and the economic benefits of giving them the opportunity to work in a society where they can be more productive and innovative. The latter benefits both the migrants themselves and current American citizens. By comparison, reducing disorder at the border is a secondary advantage, at most. But it's a very politically salient one.
Di Martino's findings are also relevant to currently ongoing litigation in which twenty red-state governments have filed a suit challenging the legality of the CNVH program. As I have previously explained, the relevant statute authorizes the president to use parole to let in migrants "for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit." Reducing pressure on the southern border qualifies as such a "significant public benefit." Or at least it does if you believe the governors of the plaintiff states, some of whom have been loudly complaining about illegal border crossings, and claiming they constitute a major crisis.
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Venezuelans fleeing the socialist regime of Nicolas Maduro.John Stosselhttps://reason.com/people/john-stossel/https://reason.com/?p=82332222023-05-03T17:13:22Z2023-05-03T17:20:52Z
There's a socialist wave in Latin America. Mexico, Chile, Peru, Bolivia, and Brazil recently elected leftists.
These politicians at least distance themselves from thugs like Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, but all propose socialism-lite policies giving government more control over more people.
Why don't people in Latin America learn from the mistakes of the past? Gloria Álvarez, a social media star from Guatemala, is running for president of her country to try to educate people about the damage socialism does.
People do need educating.
"It's like Stockholm syndrome," says Álvarez in my new video. "When you ask people, 'Who should take care of health, education, football, arts, whatever?' They always answer, 'government.' How are you going to not have corruption if you leave everything in the hands of the government?"
Álvarez's campaign is based on social media. Her TikTok announcing her campaign garnered 1.5 million views.
I'd like to think I taught her how to do that. Álvarez was once a Stossel TV Fellow. I'm hiring another now.
We helped Álvarez make a video about socialism that got a remarkable 15 million views.
But she knew about socialism well before that. She went to a libertarian university, Francisco Marroquin. "One thing that they do is teach socialism and communism. They make you read Marx and Engels…. This is lacking in most national universities. People push for socialism because they don't study it."
One survey found that most millennials support socialism. But "when they were asked to define or describe socialism, none of them could!" says Álvarez. "They don't know socialism's massive failures."
How can they not? The collapse of the Soviet Union and misery in Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba aren't visible enough?
Apparently not. Socialists still win elections.
"We're all part of that same mentality that the government has this magical power to control the economy, tell you how to live your life, and definitely not let you be free because you're too dumb or too poor to be responsible for your own life," says Álvarez.
"We have two different Latin Americas, the 'moochers and looters' that Ayn Rand defined in Atlas Shrugged," and then the "60 million Latin Americans who voted with their feet and live in the United States. They work and send money back home. In some countries, like Guatemala, these remittances are the number one source of income. This proves that we don't need governments to take care of our poor. If there is freedom, private property, rule of law, then Latin Americans thrive!"
But people keep failing to learn.
Chile once prospered by embracing capitalism. Their leader, Augusto Pinochet, met with Milton Friedman and other free market economists. They persuaded him to cut tariffs and taxes and to privatize state industries and Social Security. When Pinochet took over, Chile was poorer than the rest of Latin America. Adopting free markets soon made Chile the richest country.
Unfortunately, Pinochet was also a vicious dictator who murdered opponents. His cruelty has allowed leftists to smear economic freedom ever since.
"You cannot enforce free markets through a dictatorship," says Álvarez.
Recently Chile elected a leftist president, Gabriel Boric. He wants to abolish the private pension funds that helped make Chile richer! He wants free public transport, universal health care, higher taxes on the rich, and to end student debt. A national vote to adopt a progressive constitution was defeated, but he'll return with similar plans.
"If you don't keep educating new generations in the philosophical aspect of why individual freedoms are sacred," says Álvarez, "eventually you will have a generation with material wealth that forgets the importance of these values, and then they go out and say, 'Let's have socialism!'"
Her presidential campaign is really just an education campaign, since at 38, she is two years too young to legally become president in Guatemala.
But I'm glad she's spreading the word.
"Freedom implies…that nobody else makes decisions for you," says Álvarez. "People don't like freedom. They like their populist messiah promising them bullshit."
In early January, the Biden Administration extended the model used by the successful Uniting for Ukraine private migrant sponsorship program to include up to 30,000 migrants per month from four Latin American countries: Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Haiti. Under the program, migrants from these countries can quickly gain legal entry into the United States and the right to live and work here for up to two years, if they pass a background check and have a private sponsor in the US who commits to supporting them.
In a recent substack post, Cato Institute immigration analyst Alex Nowrasteh (one of the nation's leading immigration policy experts) describes how the program has a notable additional benefit. It greatly reduces illegal border crossings:
Encounters of migrants crossing the southwest (SW) border with Mexico are down 39 percent from December 2022 to February 2023. President Biden's immigration and border plan that expanded legal migration to the United States through humanitarian parole should take credit for this decline. Under Biden's plan, up to 30,000 migrants from Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Haiti (VCNH migrants) are allowed to enter the United States legally each month through humanitarian parole. As a result, more of them are waiting to come legally rather than attempting to cross illegally.
In February 2023, the number of VCNH migrants encountered, found inadmissible by Customs and Border Protection (CBP), or apprehended by Border Patrol decreased by 84 percent compared to December 2022. The number of VCNH migrants showing up at the border fell from 91,344 in December to 22,084 in January and then further down to 14,381 in February….
This trend supports Cato'stheorythat legal migration discourages illegal immigration and border crossings. Non-VCNH migrants who do not have the option of humanitarian parole fell by only 12.5 percent from 160,651 in December 2022 to 134,192 in January and rose again to 140,617 in February. Almost 80 percent of the total decline in encounters along the border from December to February comes from a reduction in VCNH migrants….
Biden's border plan reduced chaos along the Southwest land border in a short period. That's good for its own sake, helps clear the air for a serious immigration debate, and is politically astute for Biden, which means that the incentives for good policy are politically aligned and sustainable. Second, the Biden plan increases legal immigration when U.S. labor demand is still high. Third, it defunds criminal networks and cartels by channeling many migrants into the legal system and away from the black market.
For reasons Alex explains, the reduction in illegal crossing by VCNH country migrants cannot be explained by other factors. It is powerful evidence for the proposition that the easiest way to reduce illegal migration is to make the legal kind easier. This also, of course, has the effect of reducing disorder at the border, and curbing opportunities for organized crime.
For reasons laid out in my earlier post, it is also pretty obvious that there are compelling "humanitarian reasons" for paroling migrants from these four nations. On this point, too, you don't need to take my word. You can instead take that of the governors of some of the plaintiff states in the lawsuit:
Three of the four nations included in the program are ruled by oppressive socialist dictators, whose policies have created horrific conditions. Few have put it better than Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, whose state is one of the participants in lawsuit. As he said last year, Venezuela's socialist president Nicolas Maduro is a "murderous tyrant" who "is responsible for countless atrocities and has driven Venezuela into the ground." DeSantis went on to say that "people [in Venezuela] are "really hurting,"due to the government's policies. It is indeed true that Venezuelan socialism has resulted in widespread oppression, poverty, and hyperinflation, leading to the biggest refugee crisis in the history of the Western hemisphere, with some 6 million people fleeing. Texas Governor Greg Abbott, whose state is spearheading the lawsuit, has also noted the severe economic crisis in Venezuela, which he (rightly) blames on socialism.
In 2021, DeSantis signed a law requiring Florida public schools to provide 45 minutes of instruction each year on the evils of Communist regimes, including that of Cuba, which DeSantis correctly described as responsible for "poverty, starvation, migration, systemic lethal violence, and suppression of speech." Cuba, likewise, inflicts severe poverty and oppression on its people, including recent brutal suppression of protests in July 2021….
Nicaragua under the increasingly authoritarian socialist rule of Daniel Ortega is a similar story. Ortega's repression has deepened already severe poverty, and created what even the left-leaning BBC describes as an "atmosphere of terror…."
Abbott, DeSantis, and other GOP governors have repeatedly denounced both the evils of socialism generally, and those of the Cuban, Venezuelan, and Nicaraguan governments specifically.
But perhaps they have somehow forgotten these things. If so, DeSantis should invite his fellow GOP governors to sit in on one of the 45-minute classes on the evils of communism, established under the law he signed last year.
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Venezuelans fleeing the socialist regime of Nicolas Maduro.Ilya Sominhttps://reason.com/people/ilya-somin/isomin@gmu.eduhttps://reason.com/?post_type=volokh-post&p=82204052023-05-22T20:42:31Z2023-01-25T21:15:55Z
The Biden Administration recently adapted the approach used by the successful Uniting for Ukraine private migrant sponsorship program to include a combined total of up to 30,000 migrants per month from four Latin American countries: Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Haiti. Under these programs, migrants fleeing war, oppression, poverty, and violence in these countries can quickly gain legal entry into the United States and the right to live and work here for up to two years, if they have a private sponsor in the US who commits to supporting them.
Yesterday, twenty GOP-controlled states filed a lawsuit challenging the legality of the program for the four Latin American nations (though not Uniting for Ukraine). They claim the program lacks proper congressional authorization, and that it needed to go through the "notice and comment" procedure of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). Ironically, the flaws in the lawsuit are highlighted by the plaintiff state governors' own statements about the evils of socialism and the urgent need to address the crisis at the southern border.
The legal basis for these private sponsorship programs is a 1952 law that gives the attorney general the power to use "parole" to grant foreign citizens temporary residency rights in the US, "on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit." Are there "urgent humanitarian reasons" to grant entry to migrants fleeing these four Latin American nations? Most definitely! But don't take my word for it. Take that of the governors of several of the states that filed this lawsuit.
Three of the four nations included in the program are ruled by oppressive socialist dictators, whose policies have created horrific conditions. Few have put it better than Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, whose state is one of the participants in lawsuit. As he said last year, Venezuela's socialist president Nicolas Maduro is a "murderous tyrant" who "is responsible for countless atrocities and has driven Venezuela into the ground." DeSantis went on to say that "people [in Venezuela] are "really hurting,"due to the government's policies. It is indeed true that Venezuelan socialism has resulted in widespread oppression, poverty, and hyperinflation, leading to the biggest refugee crisis in the history of the Western hemisphere, with some 6 million people fleeing. Texas Governor Greg Abbott, whose state is spearheading the lawsuit, has also noted the severe economic crisis in Venezuela, which he (rightly) blames on socialism.
In 2021, DeSantis signed a law requiring Florida public schools to provide 45 minutes of instruction each year on the evils of Communist regimes, including that of Cuba, which DeSantis correctly described as responsible for "poverty, starvation, migration, systemic lethal violence, and suppression of speech." Cuba, likewise, inflicts severe poverty and oppression on its people, including recent brutal suppression of protests in July 2021. It's no accident that, before the recent Venezuela crisis, the biggest refugee flow in the history of the Western Hemisphere was that of people fleeing Cuban communism in the 1960s and 70s. Many would like to flee today, as well.
Nicaragua under the increasingly authoritarian socialist rule of Daniel Ortega is a similar story. Ortega's repression has deepened already severe poverty, and created what even the left-leaning BBC describes as an "atmosphere of terror." That's why many Nicaraguans have sought to flee. As one Nicaraguan human rights activist puts it, conditions are so bad that "[t]hey'd rather die than return to Nicaragua."
I don't know about you. But it sure sounds to me like there are "urgent humanitarian reasons" for Cubans, Venezuelans, and Nicaraguans to seek refuge in the US. And few understand that better than the people bringing the lawsuit seeking to prevent them from getting it. Abbott, DeSantis, and other GOP governors have repeatedly denounced both the evils of socialism generally, and those of the Cuban, Venezuelan, and Nicaraguan governments specifically.
But perhaps they have somehow forgotten these things. If so, DeSantis should invite his fellow GOP governors to sit in on one of the 45-minute classes on the evils of communism, established under the law he signed last year. Their support of this lawsuit indicates they might need a refresher course on the subject!
Haiti, the one nation with a non-socialist government included in the program, has long been one of the poorest and most dysfunctional societies in the world. Over the last year, conditions have gotten even worse, with intensifying violence and shortages of basic necessities. It's hard to deny that Haitians, too, have "urgent humanitarian reasons" to seek refuge.
In addition to humanitarian reasons, the law also allows the attorney general to grant parole when there is a "significant public benefit" in doing so. In this case, the significant benefit is alleviating what Republican governors constantly claim is a massive crisis at the border. Just last month, Texas Gov. Abbott demanded that President Biden immediately address a "dire border crisis" caused by many thousands of migrants illegally crossing the border.
The parole policy does exactly that. Many of the migrants seeking illegal entry at the border come from the four nations covered by program. Parole would enable them to come in legally by ship or plane, and thereby bypass the border entirely, thus relieving pressure at the border, and alleviating what Abbott calls a "terrible crisis for border communities in Texas." Earlier, more limited, expansions of legal entry opportunities for Haitians and Venezuelans have already caused a substantial reduction in illegal entry by nationals of those countries. The parole program can achieve much greater progress on that front.
Unlike in the case of the evils of socialism, I find much of what GOP governors say about the border crisis unconvincing. Immigration, including that from Latin America, is far more a benefit to the US than a burden. To the extent there are humanitarian problems at the border, they are largely caused by migration restrictions that have closed off pathways to legal entry for many people fleeing terrible conditions. But the more credence you give to GOP governors' rhetoric about the scale and urgency of the border crisis, the stronger the legal rationale for Biden's parole program.
Of course, most Republicans would rather address the border situation through increasing exclusion and deportation, rather than by making legal entry easier. I think their approach is likely to fail (and has historically failed), for much the same reasons as Prohibition led to an expanded illegal trade in alcoholic beverages. But even if their strategy really is better, it still doesn't undercut the legal rationale for Biden's actions. The relevant provision of the law only requires that parole produce a "substantial public benefit," not that it be the best possible way of achieving it.
Another "significant public benefit" of the parole program is strengthening the US position in the international war of ideas against socialist authoritarians. By giving refuge to people fleeing brutal socialist governments, we send a powerful message of the superiority of our system over theirs. Conservatives used to understand this point during the days of the Cold War, which is why most supported the use of this same parole power to grant entry to Hungarian, Cuban, and Vietnamese refugees from communism, among others. Sadly, today, too many on the right prioritize nativism over opposition to socialism.
The state lawsuit also argues that the parole program is illegal because it does not engage in "case-by-case" determinations of eligibility, as required by the statute. But unless it is going to be completely arbitrary or random, case-by-case discretion must be guided by general rules. And, as a general rule, migrants from these four countries face severe oppression and privation if they are forced to return. Thus, their admission is justified by "urgent humanitarian reasons." The Supreme Court recently upheld the use of relatively broad rules under the parole power in the "Remain in Mexico" case.
I discussed the relationship between case-by-case discretion and general rules in immigration policy, in more detail in this 2016 article.
The same considerations that defeat the states' statutory argument also undercut their procedural APA claim. While notice and comment rule-making is generally required for major regulatory changes, there is a "good cause" exception for—among other things—emergencies that require urgent action. The dangers faced by migrants from the four countries are pretty obviously an emergency. Every day of delay means more suffering for them, and in many cases more exposure to violence. And if the border crisis is as bad as GOP governors say it is, it qualifies as an emergency requiring swift action, as well.
It is arguable that the private sponsorship programs—including Uniting for Ukraine—cannot be continued indefinitely without going through the notice and comment process. But, given urgent exigencies, they can at least be initiated without it.
Finally, it is telling that the GOP states have sued to terminate the private sponsorship parole program for the four Latin American countries, but not the very similar one for Ukrainians, despite the fact that the latter is the model for the former. The most obvious explanation is that Ukrainian migrants are more popular—especially among Republicans—than Latin American ones. But such politically motivated distinctions suggest the plaintiffs are motivated more by politics, rather than any supposed commitment to the rule of law. In fairness, that is a common pattern, when it comes to lawsuits filed by politicians.
Whatever the plaintiffs' motives here, it is important to recognize that, if they prevail, Uniting for Ukraine is likely to be imperiled, as well as the program they are challenging. The legal justifications for the two are close to identical. Even if the plaintiff states would prefer to spare Uniting for Ukraine, that may not preserve it against challenges by other potential litigants (though some of the latter might be blocked by standing and other procedural barriers).
In this case, as in other state challenges to immigration policies, standing is likely to be an issue. I won't go into detail on that question here, except to reiterate my longstanding view that states should have broad standing rights to challenge federal policies, even when I believe they are wrong on the merits, as in the case of Biden v. Texas, currently before the Supreme Court.
In sum, this lawsuit deserves to fail for reasons well-articulated by some of the very people who filed it.
UPDATE: Cato Institute immigration policy expert David Bier makes some related points about the legal justification for the use of parole in this case, here.
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Venezuelans fleeing the socialist regime of Nicolas Maduro.Ilya Sominhttps://reason.com/people/ilya-somin/isomin@gmu.eduhttps://reason.com/?post_type=volokh-post&p=82190912023-01-17T06:44:41Z2023-01-17T05:25:54Z
The video of my recent Amanpour & Co. TV interview on the Uniting for Ukraine private refugee sponsorship program is now available on Youtube. It aired this Monday on CNN International and PBS.
The interviewer and I discuss the program, its recent expansion to include migrants from four Latin American nations, and a variety of possible objections to these policies, including claims they are unfair to migrants from other countries, possible security risks, and others. This was probably my longest-ever appearance on TV, with the exception of those on C-SPAN.
The interview arose from my earlier Washington Post article on the Uniting for Ukraine program, and my participation as a sponsor (non-paywall version available here). I previously wrote about Uniting for Ukraine and private refugee sponsorship here, here, and here. In a recent post, I covered some common questions and misconceptions about these policies, and also explained how interested readers can start the process of becoming sponsors themselves.
Since publishing a Washington Post article (paywall-free version here) about the Uniting for Ukraine private refugee sponsorship program, I have gotten a variety of questions about how the program works, particularly from people interested in possibly becoming sponsors. Interest was further heightened by the White House's recent expansion of private sponsorship to include four Latin American countries: Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Haiti.
In this post, I go over a few of the most common questions and misconceptions I have seen. The post is not a comprehensive guide to becoming a sponsor. Still less does it try to address all the moral and policy issues at stake in these programs (though I have written about the latter in various previous writings, such as here and here). But I hope it can be useful nonetheless.
I. Is the Uniting for Ukraine program capped at 100,000 participants?
Months ago, President Biden said the US would seek to take in 100,000 Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion of their country. This has apparently led many people—both Ukrainians and potential American sponsors—to assume that the Uniting for Ukraine program is capped at 100,000 participants. But, in reality, there is no such cap. The figure of 100,000 was just political rhetoric, not a legally binding constraint.
This is actually one of those rare instances where a government policy has outperformed aspirational promises, as opposed to fallen short of them. As of December, 94,000 Ukrainians had already entered the country under the policy, and tens of thousands more had been authorized to come, though not yet arrived. By now, the 100,000 figure has almost certainly been exceeded.
While there is no numerical cap on Uniting for Ukraine participants, the newly announced program for Cubans, Nicaraguans, Venezuelans, and Haitians does have such a restriction: a cap of 30,000 per month from all four countries combined. However, applicants who miss the cutoff one month can potentially be admitted the next.
II. Do participating migrants have to live in their sponsor's house?
The answer to this unexpectedly common question is "no." There is no such rule, and admittedly anecdotal evidence suggests that most sponsorees do not in fact live in their sponsors' homes, and especially not for more than a brief period after arriving in the US. Participants in private sponsorship programs generally seek out rental housing, as have most other immigrants throughout American history. They can afford to do so, because they are legally authorized to work in the United States, and most seek to quickly enter the labor force (which is very feasible given severe labor shortages in many sectors of our economy).
Far from being required to live with their sponsors, migrants are not even required to take up residence in the same city or state. For example, our own sponsorees now live in Florida, despite the fact that my family and I live in Virginia. The family we sponsored chose Florida because they have friends there (previous Ukrainian immigrants) and because of housing and job opportunities.
III. What are the financial obligations of sponsors?
The answer to this question isn't completely clear. The US Citizenship and Immigration Service indicates that sponsors should be able to assist with housing, health care, and various other basic needs. If you interpret this broadly and literally as requiring sponsors to pay for all such expenses, the cost will be prohibitive for all but the very wealthy. However, USCIS regulations do not require the provision of any specific amount of assistance. And, in practice, neither the government nor program beneficiaries can sue sponsors for failure to provide a specific sum. Thus, the amount of financial support is largely left up to sponsors and beneficiaries to determine among themselves.
Would-be sponsors do have to file a form that, among other things, indicates the amount of financial resources they have. USCIS can reject people they deem as having insufficient funds. In practice, however, anecdotal evidence indicates such rejections are rare, and acceptance certainly is not limited to the very wealthy.
Potential sponsors should not take this situation as a license to withhold assistance they have promised to give. As I see it, if you promised to give people fleeing war and oppression a given sum of money or other assistance, you are morally obligated to keep that promise, even if they cannot go to court to enforce it.
Sponsors should be honest about what support they can and cannot give. But, ultimately, the biggest gift sponsors can offer migrants is not money but the chance to live in a society with vastly greater freedom and opportunity than the one they fled.
What is true of funds is also true of logistical and other assistance. Official guidelines on this are vague and general, generating little in the way of precise, legally enforceable obligations. But many newly arriving migrants can benefit from help with navigating bureaucratic and other difficulties, which sponsors can often provide even if they cannot give much money.
IV. How can I begin the process of potentially becoming a sponsor—or a sponsoree?
If you already have connections with eligible citizens of one of the five covered countries who want to be your sponsorees, you can file Form I-134A at the USCIS website (one for each sponsoree, even if they are members of the same family). Remarkably—especially by the sclerotic standards of US immigration bureaucracy—approval often comes very quickly, as fast as within a week or two of filing. Ours took only nine days.
If you are interested in being a sponsor, and want to be connected with potential sponsorees, the best way to start is to register and create a profile at the Welcome.US website, a private nonprofit that facilitates connections between sponsors and eligible migrants. They have a site for potential sponsors and participants in the Uniting for Ukraine program (which is how my wife and I found our own sponsorees), and are in the process of setting up a similar site for sponsors and migrants for the four Latin American countries.
Their Uniting for Ukraine site has instructions and communications options in Russian and Ukrainian, as well as English. I hope and expect the site for the four Latin American countries will also eventually be accessible in Spanish and French.
The Welcome.US Ukrainian site allows potential migrants to set up their own profiles and contact potential sponsors on the site directly. I am not sure if the site for the other four countries yet has this capability. But hopefully it will soon.
UPDATE (June 7, 2023): The Welcome.US site now does have capabilities to connect potential sponsors with potential sponsorees from the four Latin American nations.
Yesterday, President Joe Biden announced a new immigration framework to address record-high migrant crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border. The carrot-and-stick plan will increase expulsions for migrants who attempt to enter the U.S. illegally, and it also lays out a legal pathway for migrants from certain countries to live and work in the U.S. temporarily.
The framework will triple refugee resettlement from Latin America and the Caribbean in 2023 and 2024, for an annual cap of 20,000. Each month, up to 30,000 migrants combined from Venezuela, Nicaragua, Haiti, and Cuba may come to live and work in the U.S. on a two-year status if they secure an American sponsor and pass background checks.
Meanwhile, the White House says "individuals who irregularly cross the Panama, Mexico, or U.S. border after the date of this announcement will be ineligible for the parole process and will be subject to expulsion to Mexico," which will accept up to 30,000 migrants monthly from Venezuela, Nicaragua, Haiti, and Cuba who have been expelled. Mexico will do so under an expansion of the pandemic-era Title 42 order, which allows for the immediate expulsion of border crossers. Previously, Mexico only accepted Mexicans, Guatemalans, Hondurans, and Salvadorans removed under Title 42. (It recently began accepting expelled Venezuelans as well.) Unauthorized migrants "will be increasingly subject to expedited removal to their country of origin and subject to a five-year ban on reentry," according to the White House.
Certain aspects of the framework will likely help reduce the number of migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border, which has been a great challenge for the Biden administration so far. Under the new parole pathway, migrants can begin the process to secure legal passage to the U.S. from their home countries rather than doing so through an asylum claim (which can only be initiated at a port of entry or on U.S. soil). This could help save them a dangerous northward journey and reduce overcrowding at the border.
"I expect fewer illegal crossings if the administration implements the proposed plan as it outlined it yesterday," David J. Bier, associate director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, tells Reason. "The new legal migration programs along with the expansion of Title 42 will lead to a meaningful reduction in unlawful crossings by incentivizing people to wait for the legal option to become available to them."
The pathway for Nicaraguans, Cubans, and Haitians mirrors similar programs established for Ukrainians and Venezuelans last year. Those programs helped reduce unlawful crossings among those groups, says Bier: "The Ukrainian parole program eliminated migration to the U.S.-Mexico border by Ukrainians. Venezuela's program has already turned migration to be mostly legal." Last summer, Customs and Border Protection reopened ports of entry to Haitians, which "basically ended illegal immigration by Haitians," Bier explains.
"These facts demonstrate the power of having robust legal options for people to migrate, and I think the more success stories are shown, the more countries the policy will be applied to," says Bier.
There are also major benefits to the sponsorship-based approach, through which U.S. citizens can financially support migrants and help them integrate. Sponsors have an incentive to help migrants get jobs—and financial independence—quickly. However, the new pathway may end up eventually filtering sponsored migrants into the asylum backlog. "The status only lasts two years and people will likely wind up in the overwhelmed asylum process," says Sam Peak, a policy analyst at Americans for Prosperity. "What we truly need is actual private refugee sponsorship, where people can privately sponsor somebody to permanently stay in the country if they are eligible for refugee status."
There are serious logistical downsides to the Biden administration's new framework. Many migrants flee their home countries under duress and without time to fully plan an escape. For those leaving repressive countries like Venezuela, Nicaragua, Haiti, and Cuba, it could be extremely difficult to fly to the U.S. or obtain passports from their governments—both requirements of the parole pathway. There are also many migrants who began their northward journeys before the policy was announced and are now stuck in limbo as U.S. immigration agents turn them away.
Parts of the framework are likely to face legal challenges too. "Congress specified directly that crossing illegally should not be considered as a basis for denying someone the right to apply for asylum," says Bier, who is "hopeful courts will strike it down, and the administration will decide it is unnecessary because the new legal processes are working to end illegal immigration on their own." The framework's Title 42 expulsion authority may well be on shaky ground, as the pandemic policy will be taken up by the Supreme Court this spring.
Expanding legal migration pathways is a critical step in solving the chaos at the border, and the new parole program will help many people from repressive countries reach safety. The Biden administration deserves praise for this. But many people in precarious situations will flee their countries and will nonetheless be barred from seeking asylum in the U.S. if, for instance, they don't have passports or failed to seek protection in a third country. There's still much more to be done to establish fair and efficient processes at the border.
Just two days after I published a Washington Post op ed urging expansion of the Uniting for Ukraine private refugee sponsorship model to include migrants from other nations, the Biden Administration did exactly that—announcing that a similar approach will be used to accept up to 30,000 migrants per month from Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Haiti. In reality, the two events were probably unconnected! Regardless, still a step in the right direction.
According to the White House "fact sheet" released today, "up to 30,000 individuals per month from these four countries, who have an eligible sponsor and pass vetting and background checks, can come to the United States for a period of two years and receive work authorization." If I understand it, this is 30,000 total from, all four nations combined, not 30,000 from each one.
This system is very similar to the conditions of the highly successful Uniting for Ukraine program, described in my article, except that the latter has no monthly numerical cap. The Administration had previously created a much more limited version of the program for Venezuelan refugees, capped at just 24,000 total participants. Today's measure is a huge expansion.
As explained in my previous writings on private refugee sponsorship and Uniting for Ukraine (e.g. here and here), this sort of system admits refugees far faster than the sclerotic traditional refugee system, bolsters our economy, and improves America's position in the international "war of ideas" against despots like Russia's Vladimir Putin, Refugees from Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua are fleeing repressive anti-American communist and socialist regimes. During the Cold War, conservatives understood the moral and strategic advantages of opening our doors to refugees from communism. Today, sadly, too many of them prioritize nativism instead.
This move also undermines claims that Uniting for Ukraine privileges mostly white Ukrainian refugees over non-white ones fleeing comparable ones elsewhere. Most migrants from the four countries covered by today's new initiative are not "white," as that admittedly arbitrary concept is usually understood in the US. Haitian migrants are overwhelmingly black, as are some Cubans. To the extent there has been a double standard here, the right approach to is to "level up." Today, the Administration moved in that direction.
Ideally, the system should be open to those fleeing poverty and oppression, regardless of country. But today's announcement is a major step in the right direction, nonetheless.
Even so, this expanded program, like Uniting for Ukraine, has two major limitations noted in my recent article about the latter:
Second, the program is largely the product of executive discretion. If the political winds shift and President Biden (or a successor) decides to terminate it, participants could be subject to deportation. Congress should pass legislation to permanently fix these flaws.
As noted in the article, fixing these flaws likely requires congressional action.
Today's expansion of private refugee sponsorship is unfortunately coupled with various harmful "border enforcement" measures that will expand expulsion of migrants at the border. By making legal entry more difficult for those who do not qualify for the expanded private sponsorship system, these steps will predictably worsen the situation at the border, and increase suffering among migrants. The Administration also continues to play what looks like a cynical double game on cruel Title 42 "public health" expulsions.
We should not lose sight of these wrongs. At the same time, however, the Biden Administration has also made many improvements in immigration policy. The introduction of large-scale private refugee sponsorship is one of its most impressive achievements. Hopefully, this will not be the last expansion of the system.
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Venezuelan Americans celebrating the Biden administration's decision to grant Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to Venezuelan refugees in 2021. Ilya Sominhttps://reason.com/people/ilya-somin/isomin@gmu.eduhttps://reason.com/?post_type=volokh-post&p=82174022023-02-28T04:08:05Z2023-01-03T19:27:37Z
Today the Washington Post published my op ed on the Uniting for Ukraine private refugee sponsorship program, in which I am a participating sponsor myself:
Nine days after my wife and I submitted the sponsorship forms, the U.S. government authorized admission to three Ukrainian refugees — Ruslan Hasanov, his wife, Maya, and their 2-year-old daughter, Melissa. Less than five weeks after that they were here. This is little short of a miracle to those of us who have long lamented the sclerotic state of the U.S. refugee system.
The next step is for Congress and the Biden administration to work together to turn that miracle, with some critical improvements, into the norm. And not just for Ukrainians.
The brutal Russian invasion has forced more than 7 million people to flee Ukraine, creating the largest European refugee crisis since World War II. In response, the Biden administration established Uniting for Ukraine, a private refugee-sponsorship program that enables Ukrainian migrants to enter the United States far more easily than is possible under the conventional refugee admission system….
The speed and ease of entry accomplished under Uniting for Ukraine are an impressive achievement, especially by the glacial standards of U.S. immigration bureaucracy, where visa and refugee applications routinely languish for many months or even years….
Since April, at least 94,000 Ukrainians have entered the United States under the program. By contrast, the conventional refugee admission system, which relies on the government-approved agencies to resettle and support refugees, only admitted 25,400 people from around the world during all of fiscal 2022….
The [Hasanov] family's experience exemplifies that of many other refugees. They fled the town of Irpin, near Kyiv, shortly before it was taken by Russian troops. They narrowly escaped a horrific occupation that included the torture and murder of hundreds of civilians. Even so, they endured bombing and shelling by Russian forces…
Having heard about United for Ukraine from friends, they decided to come to the United States, where there is more openness to migrants than in many European countries, and, as Maya put it, there are people from many backgrounds and all are "equal … regardless of nationality, skin color or religion." Her words would have warmed the heart of George Washington, who envisioned America as "an Asylum for the poor and oppressed of all nations and religions…."
Despite its virtues, Uniting for Ukraine still has two major shortcomings.
Second, the program is largely the product of executive discretion. If the political winds shift and President Biden (or a successor) decides to terminate it, participants could be subject to deportation. Congress should pass legislation to permanently fix these flaws….
Ultimately, the United States should establish a general system of private refugee sponsorship, modeled in part on Canada's successful program, that applies regardless of nationality. Doing so would not only help people escaping war and oppression, but also bolster our economy — migrants contribute disproportionately to economic growth and innovation — and enhance the U.S. image in the international "war of ideas" against dictators such as Russia's Vladimir Putin.
In the article, I also propose some smaller improvements in the program, and briefly explain how would-be sponsors can get started by setting up a profile at Welcome Connect, a website that matches potential U.S. sponsors with Ukrainian refugees.
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Jim Epsteinhttps://reason.com/people/jim-epstein/jim.epstein@reason.comNick Gillespiehttps://reason.com/people/nick-gillespie/gillespie@reason.comDanielle Thompsonhttps://reason.com/people/danielle-thompson/danielle.thompson@reason.comhttps://reason.com/?post_type=video&p=81990012022-11-29T14:54:18Z2022-11-29T16:00:59Z
"The United Nations is a massive club for dictators," says Thor Halvorssen, the founder and CEO of the Human Rights Foundation (HRF), a nonprofit founded in 2005. "The rich, powerful, and corrupt get together in Davos. Well, some of the world's bravest people get together at the Oslo Freedom Forum."
On October 3, 2022, the HRF convened the Oslo Freedom Forum, a one-day conference at Manhattan's Town Hall, bringing together political activists from around the world to call attention to rising authoritarianism in China, Iran, Russia, Venezuela, and other countries.
There were no wonkish policy panels or PowerPoint slides cluttered with data and footnotes. The conference featured instead a series of TED Talk–style speeches, delivered without notes and designed to forge an emotional connection between the audience and the presenters.
Among the speakers: Anna Kwok, who worked as an anonymous online organizer during Hong Kong's pro-democracy protests of 2019, which took place as China consolidated power over the once-free city; Oleksandra Matviichuk, a Ukrainian human rights activist and lawyer based in Kyiv; Leopoldo López, a Venezuelan human rights activist who spent five years in prison after organizing massive protests against the government in 2014; and Masih Alinejad, an exiled Iranian journalist and activist who helped bring attention to protests against mandatory hijab laws in her home country even before the murder of Mahsa Amini drew international outrage.
HRF's chairman, former World Chess Champion and arch-critic of Vladimir Putin, Garry Kasparov, also addressed the gathering, telling the audience that Ukraine "is not just a battlefield but a frontline of the total war against freedom and tyranny."
Reason spent the day backstage talking to the participants and organizers about the Human Rights Foundation's mission of building a united community to counter rising authoritarianism around the globe. The speakers argued for a range of actions from free nations to expand human rights, ranging from heightened diplomatic pressure to increased military aid to sanction regimes that would cut countries such as China and Saudi Arabia off from the global economy.
"People say, 'You oppose dictatorships, you are a neocon, you want to go to war with these dictatorships,'" says HRF's Halvorssen. "I'm not asking for boots on the ground, I'm not asking for an invasion of any country. The problems of Venezuela will be solved by Venezuelans. The problems of Russia will be solved by Russians. What we should do is at least encourage them." He continues, "What always occurs, there comes a point when the men holding guns at the people decide, 'I'm not going to do this anymore.'"
Produced by Jim Epstein and Nick Gillespie; narrated by Gillespie; written and shot by Epstein; edited by Danielle Thompson; post-production assistance by John Osterhoudt; audio post-production by Ian Keyser.
Photos: Cao Sanchez/Polaris/Newscom; Yury Martyanov/Kommersant Photo / Polaris/Newscom; Kommersant Photo Agency/Kommersant/Newscom; Katherine Li/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; Katherine Li/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; Human Rights Foundation; Human Rights Foundation; Polaris/Newscom; Lan Hongguang / Xinhua News Agency/Newscom; UPPA/ZUMApress/Newscom; Abaca Press/Balkis Press/Abaca/Sipa USA/Newscom; HO/Newscom; LONG WEI/FEATURECHINA/Newscom; TOM WALKER/UPI/Newscom; Ernesto Mastrascusa/EFE/Newscom; CRISTIAN HERNANDEZ / Xinhua News Agency/Newscom; MIGUEL GUTIERREZ/EFE/Newscom; Boris Vergara / Xinhua News Agency/Newscom; Ukraine Presidency/SIPA/Newscom; MIGUEL GUTIERREZ/EFE/Newscom; Valentin Yegorshin/TASS/Newscom; Genin-Hahn-Marechal/ABACA/Newscom; Abaca Press/SalamPix/Abaca/Sipa USA/Newscom; Farnood/SIPA/Newscom; Stringer/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; Jaap Arriens/Sipa USA/Newscom; Social Media/ZUMA press/Newscom; Rouzbeh Fouladi/ZUMA Press/Newscom; PRESIDENT.IR/UPI/Newscom; Panoramic/ZUMA Press/Newscom; April Brady/Project on Middle East Democracy, CC by 2.0, via Flickr; Depo Photos/ZUMA Press/Newscom; Saudi press Agency/UPI/Newscom; Abaca Press/Balkis Press/Abaca/Sipa USA/Newscom; State Department/Sipa USA/Newscom; Rayner Pena/dpa/picture-alliance/Newscom; Pavel Golovkin/Pool/ZUMA Press/Newscom
Footage: Hong Kong footage by Edwin Lee
Music: "Seeking Truth" by The David Roy Collective via Artlist; "Passion" by ANBR via Artlist; "Take Up Your Cross" by The David Roy Collective via Artlist; "Come Back Home" by Ardie Son via Artlist; "A Perfect Storm" by Ardie Son via Artlist; "Intrepid" by Brianna Tam via Artlist; "The New World" by Ardie Son via Artlist; "A Tender Heart" by The David Roy Collective via Artlist
The Biden Administration's new Uniting for Ukraine program has enabled Ukrainians fleeing Russia's brutal invasion and repression to enter the United States far more quickly and easily than would have been possible through the sclerotic traditional refugee admission system. This success can be expanded on in the future. The Wall Street Journal has a helpful summary of the program and its success (unfortunately paywalled; but there are various legal ways around it):
Mariia Holovan left Ukraine on a bus to Poland, waited for what felt like forever at the border, flew to Chicago, then connected to Charlotte, N.C., and met an American named Grant Jones. Together they went to her new home in the United States…..
Their unlikely meeting was a long time coming…..
But maybe the most unexpected of the many forces that brought Ms. Holovan and Mr. Jones together was a U.S. government program that worked because it barely resembled one.
It was fast. It was efficient. And it bulldozed through the roadblocks of Washington's immigration bureaucracy to clear a pathway for Ukrainians.
Ukrainians who qualified were granted immediate humanitarian parole to live and then work in the U.S. for two years as long as they had sponsors here vowing to support them financially. There were many who wanted to come—and even more Americans who wanted them here. The numbers behind the program called Uniting for Ukraine were staggering: 171,000 applications to be sponsors, 121,000 travel authorizations for Ukrainians and roughly 85,000 arriving since April, said a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesman.
By contrast, 25,465 refugees from around the world resettled in the U.S. with a path to citizenship in the government's fiscal 2022, according to State Department data. The prior year, it was 11,411, the fewest in the U.S. refugee program's history….
The war in Ukraine was a crisis that required a nimble policy response, but the immigration system was not the first place anyone would look to find it.
Then the White House's commitment to accept 100,000 Ukrainians after the invasion created an unusual mandate for the Department of Homeland Security: make it easier for people to escape a war. The existing refugee program is supposed to respond to humanitarian emergencies, said Julia Gelatt, a senior analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, but it doesn't serve that urgent role with its slow timeline for vetting and processing…..
The authorities at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services found ways to rewrite the rules for this exodus. The concept of temporary parole and model of private sponsorship dramatically streamlined the process. The accelerated program built around electronic applications allowed Ukrainians to seek refuge online and skip the paperwork normally required. The government even collaborated with a nonprofit that matched Americans and Ukrainians. Entering the country took weeks instead of years as a result. This idea of so many displaced people getting to the U.S. so quickly was "completely unheard of," said Matthew La Corte, an immigration policy expert at the Niskanen Center think tank.
I myself am a participating sponsor in the Uniting for Ukraine program, and can thereby testify first-hand to its effectiveness. Like the North Carolina family featured in the Wall Street Journal article, my wife and I created a profile on the Welcome Connect, a free nonprofit website that matches would-be US sponsors with Ukrainian refugees seeking them. Within a few days, we connected with a Ukrainian family, and agreed to sponsor them. I then filled the necessary paperwork at the USCIS website. In sharp contrast to the normal glacial pace of the federal government's immigration bureaucracy, we got a response granting entry authorization within less than ten days after I submitted the forms (a process which you can do entirely online). The family - a couple and their 2.5 year-old-daughter - will be arriving sometime within the next two weeks - less than two months after we started the process of becoming sponsors.
Some parts of the process were still unnecessarily annoying and bureaucratic. Communication with the Ukrainian family was greatly eased by the fact that I am a native speaker of Russian (which most Ukrainians also know). Things would have been tougher if we could only communicate in English, though I know other US sponsors have nonetheless successfully coped with this problem.
Despite these caveats, Uniting for Ukraine is a massive improvement over traditional refugee admissions policy. In a July Washington Post article, coauthored with Canadian refugee policy specialist Sabine El-Chidiac, we describe how the US can build on the program and expand it into a more general system of private refugee sponsorship for refugees fleeing war and oppression around the world. As we explain, we can also adapt elements of Canada's generally successful private refugee sponsorship system. Such a system would enable the US to take in many more refugees at little or no added expense to taxpayers. And any expenses would be easily outweighed by the economic contributions the migrants make after they get settled.
The Biden Administration has already created a similar program for migrants fleeing Venezuela's brutally repressive socialist government, though unlike Uniting for Ukraine it it has a numerical cap of only 24,000 participants. The Venezuelan refugee crisis has not attracted as much attention as the Ukrainian one. But it is in fact of comparable magnitude, with some 6 million people fleeing the regime's socialist oppression over the last few years. Next year, the Administration plans to create a more general private refugee sponsorship pilot program, though its parameters are still unclear.
Despite its virtues, Uniting for Ukraine still has at least two significant limitations. One is that the residency and work permits received by participants currently last for only two years. Experience with past conflicts shows that many refugees will need permanent homes, not just temporary ones. Permanence also enables them to make greater economic and social contributions to American society. The second is that the program currently rests largely on the discretion of the executive. If the political winds shift and President Biden (or a successor) decides to terminate it, participants will be left out in the cold, and potentially subject to deportation. Congress should act to fix these flaws.
Finally, critics can legitimately argue that, even with the creation of a limited similar program for Venezuelans, it is unjust that that private refugee sponsorship is available to Ukrainian refugees, but not those fleeing comparable horrors elsewhere in the world. This critique has some merit. But, as I have argued previously, the solution is not to bar Ukrainians (or Venezuelans) but to "level up" by making private refugee sponsorship available to others, as well. Hopefully, the success of Uniting for Ukraine can help make that possible.
Recent events have led many people to vote with their feet against their nations' governments, most notably Russia and China. Washington Post columnist Keith Richburg, who is also a highly experienced foreign correspondent, has a thoughtful article exploring some of the implications:
It has long been a truism that if you want to know how people feel about a government and its policies, just open the borders. Then see whether people flood in or flee out.
Russians started fleeing in droves after President Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24. Now, his order of a partial military mobilization to help prop up his flagging military has prompted another surge of departures. More than 260,000 Russians, mostly men, have fled to neighboring Finland, Georgia and Kazakhstan by almost any means of transport, to avoid having to fight in an increasingly unpopular war. Some estimate the total outflow since the start of the war at 400,000.
In China, Beijing's Communist authorities have imposed some of the most stringent travel controls in years to prevent its citizens from fleeing. Citing the "great security risk" of the covid-19 pandemic, China has stopped issuing passports for "non-essential" travel outside China, essentially banning all leisure travel. Chinese hoping to flee the country's draconian pandemic controls and lockdowns have resorted to using shady online agents offering fake overseas job offers or bogus university acceptance letters.
China's financial hub, Shanghai, has also been seeing an exodus, with many citizens and expats fleeing after the city finally lifted its harsh two-month spring lockdown…
So many people are looking to leave that the phenomenon even has an internet name, "run xue," or run philosophy in English….
Besides the anti-pandemic regime, the other major reason people are leaving is the imposition of the national security law in 2020 and Beijing's tightening grip on this once freewheeling city.
Public schools have been ordered to scrap "liberal studies," which are blamed for leading to Western-style free thinking and fomenting the 2019 protests. Instead, the government is instilling more mainland-style patriotic education in classrooms…. Many families with children say the school changes are their main motivation to leave….
Whether it's Russians, Chinese or Hong Kongers, the numbers don't lie. People tend to vote with their feet. And it's hard to see the trends reversing before the governments' policies do.
What is true in Russia itself is also true in the parts of Ukraine Russia is seeking to annex on the pretext that the Russian-speaking populations there prefer Russian rule. Foot voting evidence tells a very different story: when Russian forces take over, hundreds of thousands flee. When the Ukrainians retake territory, only small groups of collaborators run in the other direction.
Russia and China aren't the only governments facing large-scale rejection through foot voting. The socialist governments of Cuba and Venezuela have also generated massive refugee outflows. The 6 million people who have fled Venezuela in recent years are the largest refugee exodus in the entire history of the Western Hemisphere. Cuban outmigration falls short mainly because Cuba had a much smaller population to begin with.
By contrast, very few people are beating down the doors to enter Russia, China, Cuba, or Venezuela. Vladimir Putin's regime has little appeal even to the millions of ethnic Russians who currently live outside its borders, and might be thought of as potential backers of Putin's Russian nationalism. Similarly, few overseas Chinese are eager to return to the homeland to live under the rule of Xi Jinping. Cuban and Venezuelan socialism has little appeal to potential migrants from other Latin American nations, despite cultural and linguistic affinities. To the contrary, millions of Venezuelans have fled to Colombia, which is far from ideal, but still vastly preferable to life under socialism.
Foot voters generally make better-informed and more carefully reasoned choices than people voting at the ballot box. For that reason, their decisions are particularly strong indicators of the relative quality of different governments, and foot voting itself is an especially valuable mechanism of political choice.
Some European and American right-wingers have praised Vladimir Putin's nationalism as a compelling alternative to Western liberal democracy. China's more technocratic form of authoritarian nationalism - including its Zero-Covid policy - also has Western admirers. The same, of course, is true of Cuban and Venezuelan socialism. Even now, Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez (founders of Cuba's and Venezuela's socialist states) are heroes to some on the left.
The evidence of people voting with their feet gives the lie to such narratives. Foot voters overwhelmingly reject these kinds of regimes. And many more would do so if the US and other liberal democracies were more open to accepting them.
Elsewhere, I have argued for opening Western doors to Russian and Chinese migrants fleeing their respective oppressive governments. It's the right thing to do for a combination of moral, economic, and strategic reasons. Many of the same points also apply to Cuban and Venezuelan refugees, though the strategic rationale is somewhat weaker, because these two states are less significant geopolitical rivals than Russia and China.
During the Cold War, many Westerners came to understand that the eagerness of people to flee communist regimes was a sign of their inferiority. The same is true of today's nationalist and socialist alternatives to liberalism.
The Republican governors of Arizona, Florida, and Texas have been busing recently arrived Latin American migrants to Democratic "sanctuary" jurisdictions. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis even had 50 Venezuelan migrants flown to the Massachusetts island of Martha's Vineyard. So far, this policy has mostly amounted to political theater, using migrants as props. But, despite the cynical motives of the Republican governors, the idea of giving migrants a chance to go to states that welcome them is a good one that could alleviate many flaws of America's immigration policy.
Liberal sanctuary states support expanded immigration to such an extent that they refuse to cooperate with most federal efforts to deport undocumented migrants. More conservative state governments often prefer a more restrictive immigration policy.
Both red and blue states can benefit from a policy allowing state governments to issue visas and work permits to immigrants not otherwise eligible for legal entry under federal law. State-based visas would enable state governments to take in immigrants who can fill needed slots in the economy, refugees fleeing poverty and oppression, and anyone else whom they might wish to welcome. Particularly at a time of massive labor shortages in many parts of the economy, such added migration would be a great boon to receiving states. Even some red states have recognized the need for additional immigrant labor in areas of their economies. For example, GOP members of Congress from rural states have sought to pass a bill increasing guest-worker visas for agricultural laborers.
A system under which states could grant visas without federal approval would enable them to swiftly secure as much labor as they wish – and also to help people fleeing oppression. The present US refugee system is slow to the point of sclerosis, admitting a record-low of 11,411 refugees in fiscal year 2021. Letting states do their own refugee admissions would enable far more people to escape poverty and tyranny, especially if states could partner with private organizations, along the lines of Canada's successful private refugee-sponsorship program.
Some conservatives claim the negative reaction of destination states to Republicans' busing of migrants proves that sanctuary jurisdictions are hypocritical, and don't really want immigrants to come. But the very fact that they embraced sanctuary policies is strong evidence to the contrary. Such laws deliberately make undocumented immigrants more difficult to deport, and thus increase the size of the migrant population. Many sanctuary jurisdictions demonstrated their commitment to their policies by fighting prolonged (and mostly successful) legal battles to defend them during the Trump administration.
Moreover, most of the blue-state outrage over the busing is not about the presence of the migrants themselves (whom charities and local residents mobilized to help) – but over the use of migrants as political pawns and the ways in which some were deceived about where they were going, and enticed with false promises of work permits. A state-based visa system could mitigate such problems by automatically granting work permits and leaving migrants in no doubt about where they are going. Sanctuary jurisdictions and others genuinely want more immigrants, and state-based visas could help them achieve that goal.
Conservative border states and others who seek to alleviate disorder at the border could also achieve some of their goals by such a policy. If state governments could issue their own migration, work, and refugee visas, many migrants would have no reason to cross the southern border in the first place. They could instead go directly by plane or ship to the states that grant them entry. Those that do cross the southern border would not need to do so illegally or cause any disruption. They could use legal ports of entry, and then quickly get on their way to their final destinations. Most of the disorder, violence, and death at the border is caused by the lack of legal pathways to entry, which forces people fleeing poverty and oppression into the black market. State visas could greatly mitigate that problem. A state-based visa system would also channel immigrants to states that want them, thereby reducing undocumented migration to those that don't. As Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Riley points out in a recent article, a system of state-based visas would simultaneously ease labor shortages, and reduce disorder at the border.
State-based visas also alleviate the harms caused by a situation where large numbers of migrants wait many months to have their asylum claims adjudicated, while also being ineligible to work legally, and thereby having to subsist on charity, welfare, or the black market. A state visa program can incorporate immediate work authorization, which would simultaneously benefit the migrants themselves, enable them to immediately start contributing to the US economy, and minimize reliance on public funds. Immigrants with work permits can swiftly begin to support themselves and their families.
State-sponsored visas are not a new idea. They have, in the past, been advocated by politicians from both parties. In 2017, Republicans Sen. Ron Johnson (Wisc.) and Rep. Ken Buck (Colo.) proposed a bill that would enable states to issue work visas for up to three years, and later renew them (though Buck later backed out). More recently, Utah Republican Rep. John Curtis advanced a similar plan. In 2019, then- Democratic Presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg (now Secretary of Transportation under President Biden) proposed a system of "place-based" visas under which communities seeking additional labor could sponsor visas for migrants who would have to remain there for three years, before becoming eligible for permanent residency anywhere in the United States. The Biden administration later put forward a version of this proposal. Visas granted by subnational governments have also been successfully used by Canada and Australia. For a more detailed overview of the Canadian and Australian systems, and various US proposals for state-issued visas, see here. But none of these ideas have made much progress in Congress, so far.
Increasing state control over immigration policy should also appeal to conservatives and others who seek a return to the original meaning of the Constitution. As James Madison, the "father of the Constitution," Thomas Jefferson, and other key Founders argued, the text and original understanding of the Constitution did not give the federal government any general power to restrict immigration. For the first hundred years of American history, immigration policy was largely under the control of the states. It may not be possible to fully restore that approach. But a system of state-issued visas would be a step in the right direction.
State-based visas are by no means perfect. Depending on how such a program is structured, immigrants who receive them might—at least initially—be confined to a particular state, thereby sometimes missing out on valuable job and educational opportunities. That could also reduce their potential contributions to the US economy, if a given immigrant could be most productive in a state other than the one that granted the visa. From a moral standpoint, it would be preferable to completely eliminate laws under which where people are allowed to live and work is restricted by arbitrary circumstances of parentage and place of birth.
But, as always, the best should not be the enemy of the good. For migrants fleeing poverty and oppression like the Venezuelans flown to Martha's Vineyard at the behest of Ron DeSantis, the right to live and work in even one American state would be a vast improvement over being barred from all. And pro-immigration states can further mitigate the problem by granting reciprocal access to each others' state-based visa holders.
Ron DeSantis has rightly said that Venezuela's socialist government "is responsible for countless atrocities and has driven Venezuela into the ground." If he and other Republicans mean what they say about the evils of socialism, they should stop using migrants as pawns, and instead support a system that makes it easy for victims of repressive regimes to find freedom in American states that want them. Progressives, libertarians, and others should also recognize that such a system would be a major advance over the status quo.
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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantisFiona Harriganhttps://reason.com/people/fiona-harrigan/fiona.harrigan@reason.comhttps://reason.com/?p=82045042022-09-21T21:27:17Z2022-09-21T21:05:50Z
Last week, Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis arranged two flights carrying nearly 50 migrants from San Antonio, Texas, to Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts.
Almost as soon as news broke about the flights, allegations began to fly: kidnapping, misuse of state funds, deception, and human trafficking. Officials in Texas and Massachusetts have already launched investigations into some of those angles. Political figures ranging from Florida Agriculture and Consumer Services Commissioner Nikki Fried to Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom have called for the Justice Department to investigate DeSantis' actions.
Yet a major question at the center of this uproar remains unanswered: Did the Martha's Vineyard flights violate any laws?
Two big legal questions are germane to the stunt: one relating to how migrants were induced to board flights and the other relating to using state funds. Legal experts, lawmakers, and the architects of the flights are now debating what was and wasn't legally permissible about the scheme.
DeSantis, for his part, has said the migrant flights were "clearly voluntary." Taryn Fenske, a spokesperson for DeSantis, shared with Axios a redacted consent form for the flight. That form mentions a "final destination of Massachusetts" and holds "the benefactor or its designated representatives harmless of all liability" incurred during the journey, which it says is meant to transport the signatory "to locations in sanctuary States."
Though much of the form is translated into Spanish, the mention of Massachusetts as the final destination is not. The only mention of Massachusetts in the Spanish portion of the redacted document is a handwritten abbreviation: "MA."
Three of the migrants flown to Martha's Vineyard filed a lawsuit against DeSantis yesterday, alleging that Florida officials "made false promises and false representations" that if they "were willing to board airplanes to other states, they would receive employment, housing, educational opportunities, and other like assistance upon their arrival." The lawsuit notes that a woman "gathered several dozen people…to sign a document in order to receive a $10 McDonald's gift card." Per the suit, the woman didn't explain what the consent form said. Migrants interviewed by NPR also explained that the same woman promised they would be flown to Boston and receive expedited work papers if they boarded the flights in San Antonio.
With this background in mind, some commentators have suggested the flight scheme may have run afoul of Texas law. Under title 5, chapter 20 of the Texas penal code, the crime of "unlawful restraint," or restricting someone's movement without consent, includes actions that involve "force, intimidation, or deception." An unlawful restraint offense is a misdemeanor, except when the victim is under 17 years old—then it's a state jail felony. At least some of the migrants DeSantis sent to Martha's Vineyard were children.
Legal experts surveyed by Politico suggested that federal criminal trafficking statutes weren't relevant unless migrants were transported against their will. If coercion was involved, the legality becomes much murkier. "If someone is told, 'Hey, get on the bus. We're going to Chicago because we have a job for you' and it's not true, that person has been victimized," said Steven Block, a Chicago lawyer and former assistant U.S. attorney who dealt with trafficking and corruption cases.
The matter of state funds is at least slightly easier to distill. Florida's 2021–2022 budget set aside $12,000,000 to implement "a program to facilitate the transport of unauthorized aliens from this state consistent with federal law." Funds that weren't spent in 2021–2022 rolled over to be used for the same purpose in 2022–2023. This is the pot through which DeSantis financed the Martha's Vineyard flights, and the governor says he'll spend "every penny" of it to "make sure that we're protecting the people of the state of Florida."
The 2022–2023 spending bill explicitly provides money for transporting migrants "from this state." That would seem to indicate an origin in Florida. But the Martha's Vineyard flights originated in San Antonio, which DeSantis acknowledges. Florida Democrats are now questioning whether this rendered the flights illegal. They are attempting to block funding for the relocation effort. A potential sticking point is that the flights were routed through Crestview, Florida, before reaching Martha's Vineyard, ostensibly to refuel.
Geography aside, the migrants' immigration status may also clash with the Florida budget language. State Sen. Aaron Bean (R–Jacksonville) stated in March that the relocation scheme wouldn't apply to people who had requested asylum in the U.S. after fleeing communist or socialist countries since "they are here lawfully." Further, the 2022–2023 budget specifies that the relocation scheme only applies to people who are "unlawfully present" in the country.
After crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, the migrants now suing DeSantis—all recent immigrants from Venezuela—turned themselves over to federal immigration officials, the lawsuit explains. Each has "active federal proceedings to adjudicate their immigration status," which authorizes them to stay in the United States unless their immigration court proceedings determine otherwise.
According to New York Timesreporting, the migrants "were screened and released to face proceedings in the future." This is how the Biden administration has been processing nearly all Cubans and Venezuelans who cross the border since the U.S. "lacks the diplomatic relations with those countries that would be necessary to send them back." The migrants likely plan to claim asylum, during which they may stay in the United States. According to manyreports, as well as the new lawsuit against DeSantis, the migrants are not here unlawfully.
Still, many pertinent details will only become clear when they're ironed out in court. The migrant flights could be lawful and immoral, misguided, hypocritical, expensive, and tarnish America's legacy as a nation of immigrants. At a minimum, it seems DeSantis has chosen to spend state resources on a legally dubious political stunt.
In May, Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill establishing a "Victims of Communism Day" in his state "to honor the hundreds of millions of people who have suffered under communist regimes across the world."
"While it's fashionable in some circles to whitewash the history of communism," DeSantis said in a statement, "Florida will stand for truth and remain as a beachhead for freedom."
One would assume that promise would extend to migrants fleeing economic ruin and humanitarian turmoil in Venezuela, a country that DeSantis has decried for its "communist regime." But with DeSantis' decision this week to fly around 50 Venezuelan migrants to Martha's Vineyard, the governor's commitment to supporting the victims of crushing left-wing regimes is questionable.
Flights carrying migrants reached the small Massachusetts island of Martha's Vineyard on Wednesday. Before taking off from San Antonio, Texas, the migrants were reportedly told they would be transported not to Martha's Vineyard but to Boston, where they could receive expedited work papers. DeSantis paid for the flights through a devoted state fund totaling $12 million, set aside by the Florida Legislature this year to transport migrants to so-called sanctuary states.
The more details emerge about the Martha's Vineyard stunt, the clearer it becomes that DeSantis has chosen to view migrants as a punishment to be inflicted on blue states. Florida officials "very intentionally chose not to call ahead to any single office authority on Martha's Vineyard so that even the most basic human needs arrangements could be made," Rachel Self, an immigration attorney, shared with reporters on Martha's Vineyard. "Ensuring that no help awaited the migrants at all was the entire point."
Andres Duarte, a 30-year-old Venezuelan interviewed by NPR, said that he and other migrants "got on the plane with a vision of the future, of making it." Though the woman who convinced him to board the flight provided few details about the journey, Duarte was hopeful. "When you have no money and someone offers help, well, it means a lot."
Rather than welcoming the people fleeing one of the world's most repressive and punishing regimes, DeSantis chose to weaponize them. This group included at least four kids younger than 9. It included people seeking refuge after escaping the regime of Nicolás Maduro, who DeSantis says "is responsible for countless atrocities and has driven Venezuela into the ground." And it was crafted to create a media splash—help wasn't waiting for the Venezuelans when they landed, but a videographer reportedly was.
All this from the governor who signed legislation requiring all public school teachers to devote at least 45 minutes of instruction on Victims of Communism Day to teach students about the suffering inflicted by communist regimes; who renamed a Tampa road after a survivor of communism in Cuba; who urged the Biden administration to provide Cubans with internet to access free information in defiance of the communist regime; who awarded a Cuban anti-communist dissident the Governor's Medal of Freedom. All this from the governor who groups Venezuela with the evil and corrupt communist regimes of the world.
As recently as last year, DeSantis spoke favorably of the people who flee those regimes to find refuge in the United States. "Why would somebody flee across shark infested waters, say leaving from Cuba, to come to southern Florida?" DeSantis said back then. "Why would people leave [communist] countries and risk their life to be able to come here? It's important that students understand that."
Many questions remain unanswered: whether the migrants will stay in Massachusetts, whether DeSantis' move violated any state or federal laws, and the precise details of how migrants were compelled to board those flights. But it's clear that these are people who could build better lives here and contribute to American communities if given the chance. Instead, DeSantis, at taxpayer expense, used these Venezuelan asylum seekers—who weren't even in Florida in the first place—to carry out a political stunt, weaponizing victims of a regime he's vigorously denounced.
In the fall of 2019, a subway fare hike in Santiago, Chile, set off some of the most violent protests in Latin America's recent history. In what the media dubbed a "social outburst," rioters destroyed churches, metro stations, and toll booths.
The protests culminated in the election of the 36-year-old leftist President Gabriel Boric, who has pledged to nationalize Chile's private pension system, raise taxes, and create a more green economy.
Even before that, protesters went after the Chilean Constitution itself.In a nationwide referendum held in October 2020, 78 percent of voters opted to replace it.
On September 4, they'll return to the polls to approve or reject a new draft constitution, which, if passed, could bring a tragic and decisive end to Chile's so-called economic miracle that turned the country into a model for how free market policies can benefit the poor.
The current constitution was adopted in 1980, when Chile was still one of Latin America's poorest countries. Over the next 40 years, the government tamed inflation, privatized industries, and slashed tariffs and red tape, which caused its GDP to soar and poverty to plummet.
Extreme poverty fell drastically, and staples of modern living like TVs, refrigerators, and washing machines became a feature in almost every home.
Here's the problem: Chile's 1980 constitution was adopted during the military dictatorship led by General Augusto Pinochet, who took control of the country in a murderous 1973 coup. Because of this, some say the constitution is illegitimate.
The best way to address problems with the document is not to scrap it altogether, but to revise it, which is exactly what's happened: since the return to democratic governance in 1989, the Chilean Constitution has been amended 140 times.
Rewriting the constitution, as an elected body has been doing over the past year, has predictably created a feeding frenzy for political interests looking to codify special rights and privileges into the nation's most important legal document.
The document permits property and asset seizures by legislative decree without compensation for rightful property owners. It constrains the mining industry, eliminates school choice, and would disband the Senate, making it easier for the executive branch to circumvent the opposition and enact its agenda.
These provisions are spelled out in almost 54,000 words—which is about seven times as long as the U.S. Constitution.
Unlike that document, which has been in place since 1788, the Chilean draft constitution focuses on expanding state power rather than constraining it.
Chile's draft constitution is even longer than Venezuela's, which was redrafted by Hugo Chávez' administration during his first year in office and set the stage for the country's socialist revolution, descent into dictatorship, and ensuing economic collapse.
Venezuela has had 26 constitutions in a little over two centuries. In general, the practice of scrapping and rewriting constitutions helps to explain Latin America's relentless political turmoil.
A constitution provides legal stability and predictability—like a computer operating system. Tampering with any foundational code creates security holes that are easily exploited by political opportunists looking to amplify their own power and overturn the established order.
Even if Chileans reject the new constitution—and, thankfully, pollsindicate that they probably will—Boric can choose to start the process again with the election of yet another constitutional assembly to draft yet another version.
That could bring years of chaos, economic stagnation, and legal uncertainty. Now that Latin America's free market experiment and "economic miracle" may be coming to an end, hopefully, the rest of the world can learn from the experience of Chile once again: Beware leftist pipe dreams.
Produced by Daniel Raisbeck and Alyssa Varas: Edited by Danielle Thompson
Photo Credits: DARDE/SIPA/Newscom; World History Archive/Newscom; Album / Oronoz/Newscom; Elyxandro Cegarra/ZUMA Press/Newscom; Matias Basualdo/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; Felipe Figueroa / SOPA Images/Si/Newscom; Lucas Aguayo Araos/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; Claudio Abarca Sandoval/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; Alberto Valdes/EFE/Newscom; Jose Miguel Rojas/SIPA/SIPA/Newscom; Jose Miguel Rojas/SIPA/SIPA/Newscom; DPST/Newscom; Alberto Valdes/EFE/Newscom; Peter Langer / DanitaDelimont.com / "Danita Delimont Photography"/Newscom; A3116 Tim Brakemeier / Deutsch Presse Agentur/Newscom; Ben185/Newscom; Lucas Aguayo Araos / SOPA Images/Newscom; Alberto Valdes/EFE/Newscom; Jon G. Fuller / VWPics/Newscom; Matias Basualdo/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; Trevor Collens / Photoshot Trevor Collens/Photoshot/Newscom; HUMBERTO MATHEUS/EFE/Newscom; HUMBERTO MATHEUS/EFE/Newscom; Jorge Villegas / Xinhua News Agency/Newscom; Matias Basualdo/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; Yadid Levy/robertharding/Newscom; akg-images/Newscom; Pablo Rojas Madariaga/ZUMA Press/Newscom; Matias Basualdo/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; Felipe Figueroa/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; Felipe Figueroa / SOPA Images/Si/Newscom; Vanessa Rubilar/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; B1mbo, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons; Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional de Chile, CC BY-SA 3.0 CL, via Wikimedia Commons; Usuario Patricio Mecklenburg Díaz (Metronick), CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons; .:GIO::IAB:., CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Music Credits: "Intrepid" by Brianna Tam via Artlist; "Odd Numbers" by Curtis Cole via Artlist; "Ripples" by Tamuz Dekel via Artlist; "Circularity" Brianna Tam via Artlist
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Eric Bazail-Eimilhttps://reason.com/people/eric-bazail-eimil/https://reason.com/?p=81950512022-07-13T21:36:51Z2022-07-13T21:45:05Z
The Department of Homeland Security announced on Monday that the U.S. government will extend its Temporary Protected Status designation for Venezuelan migrants, providing legal protections through March 2024 for over 343,000 Venezuelans who have come to the United States amid a major economic downturn and political turmoil in the oil-rich South American nation.
Lawmakers in both parties celebrated the extension. "The Biden Administration's decision to extend Temporary Protected Status for eligible Venezuelans in our nation is overdue," Sen. Marco Rubio (R–Fla.) said in a press release. "This renewal will grant necessary relief to many who cannot return to their beloved homeland right now because of the Maduro narco-regime's destruction of Venezuela."
"A candle of hope remains lit in the homes of Venezuelans across our nation that fled a nation that has been led down a path of decay," State Senator Annette Taddeo (D–Fla.), who is also running for Congress in South Florida, said in a press release.
However, many lawmakers voiced their disappointment that only migrants who arrived before March 8, 2021, the day the designation was first granted, would be eligible for those benefits. Since March 2021, 500,000 Venezuelans have left the country, raising the total number of Venezuelan refugees to six million. Over 150,000 of these refugees have arrived in the U.S. in the last 15 months alone.
Some prominent Democrats worry that the decision to exclude these most recent arrivals from TPS will leave many Venezuelan refugees in legal limbo. "Today's decision relegates hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans into a life of vulnerability and marginalization in the United States." Sen. Robert Menendez (D–N.J.), the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement. "We can and must do better."
Florida Democrats especially raised their concerns with the Biden administration's decision, in part given the state's large Venezuelan population. Over 50% of Venezuelans in the United States live in Florida, many living in the Miami metropolitan area.
"While I'm pleased about this essential extension, I strongly urge the President to offer that same refuge to Venezuelans who arrived after that same date, because nothing has changed in Venezuela, and in fact, has only gotten worse," Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D–Fla.), whose South Florida district contains cities like Weston with large Venezuelan diaspora populations, said in a press release. "They too live with the same fear of being forced to return to Maduro's brutal and repressive state, and their safety is just as vital as we all work to restore democracy and peace to Venezuela."
Conditions in Venezuela have continued to deteriorate since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite some relief from high oil prices, Venezuela's economy continues to struggle as it digs itself out of a seven-year recession that saw unprecedented inflation and massive growth in economic inequality and poverty. Over 76 percent of Venezuelans now live in extreme poverty, according to a study conducted by Venezuela's Andres Bello Catholic University. This has led many Venezuelans to continue risking the dangerous journey to the United States via Central America. In December 2021 alone, 25,000 Venezuelans were apprehended at the U.S./Mexico border by Customs and Border Protection.
Immigration experts question why the Biden administration refused to extend eligibility. "Creating a separate population of people that will have to live in the shadows, won't be able to work to help support themselves and their families, legally quite frankly, doesn't make a lot of sense," Jorge Loweree, Managing Director of the American Immigration Council, tells Reason. He points to both the explicit authority the Biden administration had under existing immigration laws to expand eligibility up until the day of the announcement and the sheer volume of new arrivals that would now be excluded.
Democrats want to see more action. In a letter to President Joe Biden and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, Taddeo, joined by 44 members of the Florida legislature, called on the administration to extend eligibility to Venezuelans who arrived before December 31st, 2021. Twenty-one Senate Democrats also joined Menendez in a letter calling for a similar eligibility expansion. They also call for greater efforts to clear the massive backlog U.S. Customs and Immigration Services (USCIS) is currently experiencing in processing applications and paperwork.
Loweree sees inaction on expanding eligibility as a bad move by the Biden administration, in light of the wide bipartisan support for expanding TPS protections for Venezuelan refugees. "The fact that the administration chose to avoid extending TPS to those who arrived in the last 17 months is a real missed opportunity to lean in and truly lead on this important issue."
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Venezuelan Americans celebrating the Biden administration's decision to grant Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to Venezuelan refugees in 2021. Eric Bazail-Eimilhttps://reason.com/people/eric-bazail-eimil/https://reason.com/?p=81899782022-06-13T20:36:05Z2022-06-13T20:36:05Z
In a speech delivered last Wednesday at the Ninth Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, President Joe Biden made a passionate plea for renewed purpose and partnership between the United States and its Latin American and Caribbean neighbors.
But it was some conspicuously empty seats in the audience that grabbed the attention. Out of the 35 countries in the Americas, only 23 sent heads of state, one of the lowest attendance rates since the first summit almost 30 years ago.
Most of these absences stem from Biden's decision to not invite Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to the summit over their human rights records, a move driven in part by pressure from Cuban-American exile groups. "There can't be a Summit of the Americas if all the countries of the continent don't participate," Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador stated at a press conference on June 6. The presidents of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, major sources of migration to the United States, also announced they would not attend in protest.
In 2001, the Organization of American States passed the Inter-American Democratic Charter, officially barring nondemocratic states from participating in successive summits at the behest of the United States. However, this rule was seemingly annulled when the U.S. and Cuba reestablished diplomatic relations under former President Barack Obama.
Cuba attended the 2015 summit in Panama, where Obama's meeting with former Cuban President Raul Castro marked the first time Cuban and American heads of state had met since the Cuban Revolution. "After 50 years of policy that had not changed on the part of the United States, it was my belief that it was time to try something new," Obama said at the time. "I think we are now in a position to move on a path towards the future, and leave behind some of the circumstances of the past that have made it so difficult, I think, for our countries to communicate."
Many assumed the Biden administration would have honored that commitment in order to maintain American geopolitical influence in the hemisphere. "We thought we had gotten over this and moved beyond this in Cartagena," says Angelo Rivero Santos, a professor at Georgetown University who previously served as Venezuela's acting ambassador to the United States. It was at the Sixth Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia, in 2012, where the U.S. faced intense pressure from other countries in the region to include Cuba in future summits.
Rivero Santos expressed concerns that the Biden administration was returning to a destructive precedent for hemispheric relations. "We seem to be back in this era where a host country like the United States can pick and choose who comes based on its own criteria."
Critics of Biden's decision have not only chafed at the U.S. unilaterally defining a region that spans two continents but also disapproved of Biden's plan to visit Saudi Arabia in July, despite his having roundly condemned the Gulf nation for its role in the torture and murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. "Geography, not politics, defines the Americas," said Belize Prime Minister John Briceño in a testy exchange with Biden at the summit.
The no-shows overshadowed many of the White House's policy announcements on Latin America, including a climate pact with Caribbean nations, a framework for regional economic collaboration, and new action plans for addressing the migration crisis.
"One way to measure the success of diplomatic summits is by how many heads [of state] show up," says Jorge Heine, a professor at Boston University who served as Chile's ambassador to China. "It's not looking good for the state of [U.S./Latin American] international relations."
Even as the Biden administration tries to salvage its feted Los Angeles Declaration, which sets common priorities and mechanisms for combating the migration crisis, the absences have member states doubting that any real improvements can be made.
"There is no way President Biden can make progress on addressing the migrant crisis since the Presidents of Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador chose not to attend," said Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R–Fla.), a key Republican voice on U.S foreign policy in Latin America and immigration reform, in a statement to Reason. "Disorganization, poor planning, and zero focus on real economic development doomed the Summit before it even started."
The summit's perceived disconnects have confirmed what some in the region have feared: The U.S. is failing to reset or even update its Latin America policy after years of neglect under former President Donald Trump.
"Expectations in Latin America when President Biden took office were high, especially in terms of the opportunities it would offer the region," Heine says. However, in Heine's view, the Biden administration has mostly adopted a "Trump-lite" approach to engagement with Latin America, especially when it pertains to immigration and policy toward Cuba and Venezuela. "The rhetoric is different, but in terms of policy, it's much the same."
"Washington seems to have prepared this summit as if it was 1994," said Rivero Santos, referring back to the first Summit of the Americas held in Miami. Rivero Santos believes the Biden administration still sees the Americas through the prism of the 1990s neoliberal political wave that swept south, but socialist and populist governments have been making inroads in the region for years. "Washington has not been able to keep up with the changes in the region. The Latin America of 1994 is very different than the Latin America of 2022."
"It makes you scratch your head and wonder: Why are they trapped in this policy?"
The Bolivarian Cable Train was an elevated railroad planned for a poor neighborhood in Caracas, Venezuela. It ended up running for only three-fifths of a mile and connecting to nothing.
By 2012, four years into the project, the government had spent about $440 million on it and the project was only partly finished. But the country's socialist leader, Hugo Chávez, decided that he wanted to take a ride on live television. The contractors told his handlers the train wasn't ready yet; the cable, motors, and machinery had not even been installed.
"No European engineer is going to tell the people of Venezuela what can or cannot be done," Chávez's lackey replied. So the government paid an extra million dollars for a temporary setup that might fool the TV audience. An ebullient Chávez (seemingly oblivious that the fragile, makeshift operation nearly sent him hurtling down the track during the broadcast) boasted that "this is the work of a socialist government so that the people will live better every day."
Today the train runs intermittently, the Brazilian company overseeing its construction has pleaded guilty to corruption in 12 countries, Chávez has died from cancer, and Venezuela, after more than two decades under the control of Chávez and his successor, Nicolás Maduro, has been transformed from a constitutional democracy into a brutal dictatorship. The whole cable train saga is vividly recounted in Things Are Never So Bad That They Can't Get Worse, a new book by former New York Times reporter William Neuman.
The book gives voice to a woman named Hilda Solórzano, providing a snapshot of what life is like for the Venezuelan poor. Her son's teeth turned black and fell out from lack of calcium. Her uncle and brother were murdered. Her 10-year-old daughter was kidnapped, tortured, killed, and tossed in a garbage dump. After Solórzano started a successful baking business, a relative stole the money she needed for ingredients. She lives in the same Caracas slum where the government spent around half a billion dollars on the Bolivarian Cable Train.
Neuman also introduces us to bookstore manager José Chacón, the "Last Chavista," who can't afford the mayonnaise, beef, and tomatoes he once loved. He skips meals and drops 15 pounds. But Chacón is unswayed. He reveres Chávez and is grateful that the socialist state taught him "to eat healthier." Someday, after everyone has fled the country, Neuman writes, "you'll see Chacón, sitting atop the great pile of rubble and ash, holding firm, chewing on the last lentil."
These are powerful depictions of human beings coping with daily existence in a disintegrating society. But when it comes to explaining why this oil-rich nation experienced one of the largest economic contractions in modern world history, the book is a muddle.
Neuman won't accept Chávez's word that he was a socialist. Although the Venezuelan leader used that word relentlessly to describe his policies after 2005, Neuman insists it was just a marketing ploy. "Chávez was neither a Marxist nor in any real sense, despite the rhetoric, a socialist," he writes. It was "showcialismo."
Was it? One classic definition of socialism is government control of the means of production. Chávez nationalized banks, oil companies, telecommunications, millions of acres of farmland, supermarkets, stores, the cement industry, a glass container maker, a gold-mining outfit, the steel industry, a fertilizer company, a shipping company, the electricity industry, vacation homes, and more. He imposed capital controls that put the government in charge of all foreign trade, turning Venezuela into a command-and-control economy—aside from its burgeoning black market, another typical feature of socialist societies.
In industry after industry, nationalization led to deterioration, abandonment, and collapse. In 2008, Chávez boasted that he would transform the steel giant Sidor into a "socialist company owned by the socialist state and the socialist workers." By 2019, at the Sidor plant in Guayana City, "everything was stained with rust," Neuman writes. "In all that great expanse, nothing moved." The book is filled with similar accounts.
So it was dumbfounding to read on page 82 that "Chávez made no serious effort to dismantle the market economy." The book claims he was merely continuing longstanding Venezuelan policies but painting them "a different color." Neuman is a journalist who tells powerful stories and then misinterprets his own material.
Chávez was not the first Venezuelan president to nationalize companies, fix the exchange rate, or impose price controls. But he pursued these policies on a much larger scale than his predecessors. Chávez also gutted property rights, destroyed the currency, dismantled the judiciary, corrupted the military, and undermined the separation of powers. One lesson of his reign is that when it comes to building sustainable prosperity, institutions matter more than possessing the world's largest oil reserves.
Neuman's analysis gets ridiculous in the post-2013 era, after oil profits (which plummeted because of a collapse in production and the end of the price boom) could no longer paper over the hollowed-out economy. That, Neuman writes, meant the state was "reduced to the absolute minimum." Services disappeared and crime ran rampant, which in his view shows us what happens when "private initiative can flourish, unencumbered." But "private initiative" depends on the rule of law. In 2019, the Fraser Institute's Human Freedom Index ranked Venezuela 163 out of 165 countries in the category of "Legal System and Property Rights."
Neuman sees nothing necessarily wrong with nationalizing industries; he just thinks Chávez did a bad job of it. "You can make an argument that certain industries or certain types of companies might be better under public control," he writes. But "you ought to make an effort to run them well—to invest in them and to hire competent administrators."
This argument reminds me of comedian John Oliver's 2018 claim that Venezuela's collapse is best understood as a case of "epic mismanagement," not socialism. It is certainly true that Chávez and his cronies mismanaged the businesses they seized. The country operated as a "mafia state," a concept developed by the Venezuelan journalist Moisés Naím. Writing recently in TheWall Street Journal,Naím observed that the country's socialism often served "as little more than a narrative that the powerful used to cover up their plunder of public assets." But that is true of many socialist regimes. Indeed, it is what we should expect of them.
In his 1944 book The Road to Serfdom, F. A. Hayek argued that the transition to government ownership of the means of production will invariably be spearheaded by the worst types of people. Only a "skillful demagogue," Hayek wrote, can bring the "gullible" together around "hatred of an enemy"—the United States, in Venezuela's case—and then show the "ruthlessness required" to centralize an entire economy. For the apparatchiks, "the readiness to do bad things becomes a path to promotion and power."
Neuman's claim that nationalization might make companies "better" also fails to recognize that when governments steal from citizens, they scare off capital. "Investment in Venezuela has disappeared," said Marcel Granier, the CEO of Radio Caracas Televisión (RCTV), in 2007. "Nobody is going to invest in a country where they're threatened with expropriation." Granier made those remarks during RCTV's final broadcast before Chávez forced the station off the airwaves.
Speaking of RCTV: At one point in the book, Neuman travels to a café in Berlin for an interview with former RCTV producer Andrés Izarra. Izarra, who used to serve as Chávez's minister of communications, is depicted as a pained ex-official "trying to make sense" of everything he went through.
Neuman does not inform his readers that Izarra is one of Chavismo's great villains—an ideologue who spent more than a decade excusing government crimes. He was central to the propaganda campaign defending the shutdown of RCTV on the grounds that the network had supported a coup attempt in 2002. In 2008, he defended Chávez's decision to expel Human Rights Watch from the country, accusing the organization of being a cover for planned U.S. interference. In 2010, he broke into uproarious and dismissive laughter during a CNN discussion of Venezuela's exploding murder rate. That same year, he tweeted: "Franklin Brito smells like formaldehyde." Brito was a martyred farmer who had died in a hunger strike after the Venezuelan government expropriated his land.
Izarra eventually fled Venezuela and now lives comfortably with his family in Germany. Hilda Solórzano remains stuck in a violent slum, worried about her next meal.
Socialism in Venezuela caused millions of personal tragedies, and I'm glad that Neuman brings many of them to life so vividly. But paying tribute to the victims should also mean being clear-eyed about the cause of their suffering. Otherwise, such catastrophes are apt to be repeated.
Record numbers of Venezuelan migrants have crossed into the United States from Mexico in recent months, hoping to apply for asylum. U.S. immigration authorities reported 24,819 Venezuelan border crossers in December 2021, compared to just 200 one year prior.
Despite the compelling case many Venezuelans have for seeking refuge in the U.S., the Biden administration is denying many of them that opportunity. Instead it is quietly deporting them to Colombia—a policy that resembles a controversial Trump administration practice.
Citing 42 USC 265, a public health provision that was also invoked by President Donald Trump, President Joe Biden thus far has expelled more than 1 million migrants who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border, preventing Venezuelans and many others from applying for asylum. Colombia will be a deportation destination for Venezuelans who have previously lived there, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Trump, no champion of immigration, offered Venezuelan nationals protection from deportation in one of the final moves of his presidency. But he also "deported an unknown number of Venezuelans through a third country," the Associated Press reported in October 2020.
Candidate Biden criticized Trump for the deportations, saying in October 2020 that "it's abundantly clear he has no regard for the suffering of the Venezuelan people." Yet President Biden is also deporting Venezuelans to third countries.
Beyond this inconsistency lies an even more nonsensical one. In March 2021, Biden's DHS announced an 18-month "temporary protected status" for Venezuelans already present in the U.S. That designation, which protects migrants from expulsion, is reserved for people fleeing an "ongoing armed conflict," "an environmental disaster, or an epidemic," or "other extraordinary and temporary conditions." The designation applies to 320,000 Venezuelans in the U.S. but excludes newcomers, despite the Biden administration's explicit recognition that America should be a safe haven.
Colombia, despite its own political and economic challenges, has welcomed the 2 million Venezuelan refugees who have traveled there as Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro drives the country into the ground. Colombia has even created a path to citizenship for its Venezuelan migrant population. But the U.S. is far better situated than Colombia to host Venezuelans, more than 5.4 million of whom have left their country since 2014 in what amounts to the second-worst refugee crisis in the world, topped only by the huge Syrian exodus.
Biden's decision to send away refugees who are eager to become Americans belies his avowed "regard for the suffering of the Venezuelan people."
Over the past several months, record numbers of Venezuelans have crossed into the United States from Mexico. The Biden administration is turning them away and has quietly resumed a practice utilized by the Trump administration that involves third countries in the expulsion of Venezuelans. Venezuelans who previously resided in Colombia will now be returned there.
This week, CNN noted that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) encountered 24,819 Venezuelans at the border in December 2021, "up from the previous month and continuing an increasing trend." Just over one year ago, "in December 2020, CBP encountered only around 200 Venezuelan migrants." But for these and many other hopeful asylum seekers, it's proving impossible to stay in the U.S.
Under a public health measure called Title 42, the Biden administration has expelled over 1 million migrants who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) enforcement of the policy has severely hobbled the American asylum process in the name of containing COVID-19. "As part of the United States COVID-19 mitigation efforts, DHS continues to enforce CDC's Title 42 public health authority with all individuals encountered at the Southwest border," DHS told CNN.
The political and economic climate in Venezuela has deteriorated significantly in recent years, causing a mass exodus. Corruption is rampant, elections are rigged, and the oppressive regime of President Nicolás Maduro brutally (and sometimes violently) shuts down dissent. An estimated 76.6 percent of Venezuelans live on less than $1.90 per day. Hyperinflation has rendered their money worthless—in October, Venezuela announced it would cut six zeroes from its currency. Over 5.4 million Venezuelans have left their country since 2014, amounting to the second-worst refugee crisis in the world after Syria.
American politicians have long recognized that the U.S. can provide refuge to fleeing Venezuelans. In 2019, the House passed bipartisan legislation that would have granted them a reprieve from deportation (though it later stalled in the Senate). Former President Donald Trump, no great friend of immigrants, offered Venezuelan nationals protection from deportation in one of the final moves of his presidency.
That said, Trump also "stealthily deported an unknown number of Venezuelans through a third country, possibly violating U.S. laws and undermining U.S. warnings about the socialist government's human rights record," the Associated Press reported in October 2020. Then–presidential candidate Joe Biden blasted the policy: "It's abundantly clear he has no regard for the suffering of the Venezuelan people."
Trump's deportation flights differed from Biden's in that they involved Trinidad and Tobago. Media outlets and politicians did not indicate whether Trump-era deportees had lived there previously, whereas Biden's DHS says it's sending Venezuelans to Colombia if they were resettled there at some point. Still, with Biden conducting deportation flights for Venezuelans and decrying Trump for similar conduct, the contradiction should be clear. And beyond this inconsistency lies an even more nonsensical one.
Despite carrying out third-country deportations, the Biden administration has taken steps to protect Venezuelans already present in the U.S. from expulsion. In March 2021, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced an 18-month temporary protected status (TPS) for Venezuelans. TPS is a Homeland Security designation reserved for people fleeing an "ongoing armed conflict," "an environmental disaster, or an epidemic," or "other extraordinary and temporary conditions." Those benefitting from or deemed eligible for TPS are not removable from the U.S. and can acquire work authorizations. Venezuela joins countries like Yemen, Haiti, and Syria on the current list of TPS-designated countries.
"The living conditions in Venezuela reveal a country in turmoil, unable to protect its own citizens," Mayorkas said. "It is in times of extraordinary and temporary circumstances like these that the United States steps forward to support eligible Venezuelan nationals already present here, while their home country seeks to right itself out of the current crises."
This applies to 320,000 Venezuelans already living in the U.S., with newcomers being excluded despite the administration's explicit recognition that the U.S. can and should be a safe haven. Expulsion to Venezuela is obviously far worse than expulsion to Colombia, which has long been open to its neighbor's refugees and has even laid out a path to citizenship for its Venezuelan migrant population. But the U.S. has plenty of resources to process, naturalize, and host Venezuelans, and shouldn't push more refugees on Colombia.
It's critical for the U.S. to welcome people fleeing one of the world's worst humanitarian crises, and it's absurd that the Biden administration is leaning into a pandemic border measure with questionable legal and medical validityto send them away. That approach shows little more "regard for the suffering of the Venezuelan people" than Trump's did.
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John Stosselhttps://reason.com/people/john-stossel/https://reason.com/?p=81688712022-02-02T18:41:07Z2022-02-02T18:41:07Z
Inflation is the worst in 40 years.
The price of cars is up 37 percent. Gas is up 49 percent.
During the last few years, as politicians spent ever more money, experts told us not to worry.
Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve, said inflation would be "transitory."
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said, "I don't anticipate inflation is going to be a problem."
Now she says, "I'm ready to retire the word transitory."
What went wrong?
"Big corporations have taken advantage," says Rep. Ted Lieu (D–Calif.).
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) tweeted: "Greedy corporations are charging Americans extra." It's "price gouging."
This is nonsense.
"Greed is constant," says economist David Henderson in my new video. "If it's greed, how do we explain prices falling?" When oil prices fall, is it because "oil companies just suddenly decide, 'I'm gonna be less greedy?'"
Prices change because of supply and demand.
Inflation results "from too much money chasing too few goods," explains Henderson. "If government's spending more money, that's more money chasing too few goods."
Lately, government borrowed from the Fed, and spent much more money. Under President Donald Trump, the national debt rose $7.8 trillion. Under President Joe Biden, it's grown $2.2 trillion in just one year. Biden wants to spend even more—a record $6 trillion this year.
Where will they get the money? Government has no money of its own, so increased spending means politicians must borrow more, tax more, or, easiest of all, create money out of thin air by just printing it.
In the last few years, that's what they did. In an untested experiment, the Fed printed more money than ever in history.
All this new money sloshing around the economy makes money we have less valuable. You notice the price increases, but you may not notice the damage inflation does to your savings.
If you put $10,000 under your pillow, 7 percent inflation will reduce that to $2,342 in just 20 years.
If you were counting on those savings for retirement, too bad. Most of your savings will be gone.
Yet today's politicians want to spend even more.
Biden claims his spending bills will "reduce inflation."
"Biden's wrong," Henderson responds. "There's no economic theory that says when the government spends a huge amount more money, prices fall."
Some people want government to stop inflation by imposing price controls.
That would be "horrible," says Henderson.
Price controls were tried before. In 1971, President Richard Nixon ordered a freeze on all prices.
It sounded reasonable. Too much inflation? Our intuition tells us that government can fix that with a price freeze. But "that's where people's intuition goes wrong," says Henderson.
Wrong because prices are not just money; they are also information.
"Prices are signals…that guide people," explains Henderson. "Mess that up, you've really messed up the economy."
Price changes tell buyers what to avoid and sellers what to produce. When COVID-19 hit, the price of face masks rose sharply. Immediately, producers made more. New Balance switched from making footwear to making masks.
Flexible pricing gets suppliers to produce what people really need.
Now there are shortages of some products because COVID-19 interrupted supply chains.
Price controls would make the shortages worse.
Soon after Nixon froze prices, there were shortages of gasoline. I drove around, wasting gas, searching for gas stations that had it.
"Price controls are like saying it's really cold and I'm going to solve that by breaking the thermometer," says Henderson. "It's actually worse than that because breaking the thermometer doesn't reduce the temperature, whereas price controls cause actual shortages!"
Venezuela's price controls led to a shortage of food. And yet inflation got much worse. 270 percent, 700 percent, eventually 400,000 percent inflation!
Once inflation starts, it's hard to stop.
In Zimbabwe, President Robert Mugabe couldn't collect enough in taxes to pay for his grand plans, so he printed more money.
A few years later, Zimbabwe was printing 100-trillion dollar bills.
Such drastic inflation hasn't happened here. It probably won't because recently the Fed reigned itself in.
But with Democrats and Republicans eager to spend more, it could happen here.
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Jim Epsteinhttps://reason.com/people/jim-epstein/jim.epstein@reason.comhttps://reason.com/?post_type=video&p=81426922021-12-15T01:16:35Z2021-12-14T17:58:03Z
COVID-19 was disastrous for Latin America, not only because of a death rate eight times higher than in the world at large but also because the pandemic created the preconditions for a resurgence of left-wing populism that poses a threat to personal freedom and economic well-being throughout the region.
In Colombia, Gustavo Petro became the leading presidential candidate, with proposals to raise taxes, seize private land, expand entitlements, and kneecap the oil and gas industries. In Peru, the new socialist President Pedro Castillo was elected with the promise of weakening property rights and rewriting the constitution to allow for a dramatic expansion of state power. In Argentina, President Alberto Fernández has responded to rapid inflation and a shrinking economy by imposing price controls, raising taxes, and growing the regulatory state. And in Chile—although the upcoming presidential runoff will help to set the nation's political course in the coming years—after the pandemic, voters opted to redraft the nation's constitution, which could enshrine into law more government intervention in the economy while weakening private property rights.
"It's very worrisome because Chile is a country that had opted for the rule of law, a secure legal system, and economic freedoms," says Antonella Marty, a 29-year-old Argentine libertarian, the Atlas Network's Associate Director at the Center for Latin America, and the author of four books about the region. "And it has fallen victim, once again, like every country in Latin America, to these terrible ideas related to big government."
In an interview with Reason, Marty discussed the bad ideas that have caused so much poverty and instability in the region, including a tendency to view political leaders as messianic figures; the belief that the rich are rich because the poor are poor; and that the key to prosperity is protectionism.
Produced by Jim Epstein; motion graphics by Isaac Reese; graphic design by Nathalie Walker; translation assistance by María Jose Inojosa Salina.
Photos: Omar Martínez/dpa/picture-alliance/Newscom; PPI/ZUMA Press/Newscom; Vanessa Rubilar / SOPA Images/Si/Newscom; Santiago Botero/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; SOPA Images/Pablo Rojas Madariaga / SOPA Ima/Newscom; Camilo Erasso/Newscom; Miyer Juana/Newscom; NUCLEO-FOTOGRAFIA > ANTHONY NINO/El Comercio de PERU/Newscom; Carlos Garcia Granthon/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; Stringer/EFE/Newscom; MatÃAs Baglietto/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; Claudio Santisteban/ZUMA Press/Newscom; Vanessa Rubilar/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; Claudio Abarca Sandoval/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; Claudio Abarca Sandoval/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; Matias Basualdo/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; Matias Basualdo/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; Sven Simon/picture alliance / SvenSimon/Newscom; Circa Images Glasshouse Images/Newscom; Sandrine Huet / Le Pictorium/ZUMA Press/Newscom; Keith Levit/Newscom; Us Coast Guard/ZUMA Press/Newscom; ENRIQUE DE LA OSA/REUTERS/Newscom; IVAN CA AS Notimex/Newscom; LENIN NOLLY/EFE/Newscom; CLAUDIA DAUT/REUTERS/Newscom; JOSE MIGUEL GOMEZ/REUTERS/Newscom
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Jim Epsteinhttps://reason.com/people/jim-epstein/jim.epstein@reason.comhttps://reason.com/?p=81410542022-03-18T14:08:46Z2021-12-02T13:30:45Z
When Aleidy Andara was 16 weeks pregnant with twin boys, she discovered during a routine ultrasound that she had a rare disorder causing an imbalance in the distribution of nutrients and oxygen between the fetuses. If she were to give birth in a Mexican hospital, the babies' chances of survival were low.
Andara and her husband, Javier Bracho, had fled Venezuela in 2019, after being detained, beaten, and tortured for participating in protests against the Maduro regime, and they had been living in Mexico for almost a year. They were seeking political asylum from the U.S., but as part of the "Remain in Mexico" program created by the Trump administration, they were required to wait outside the country while their cases were considered.
On August 11, 2020, desperate for Andara to be treated at a U.S. hospital, the couple hired a coyote to take them across the Rio Grande on an inflatable boat. They were picked up by border patrol, and Andara's plea was granted. On September 10, she gave birth to Noah and Nathan at a hospital in Indianapolis, Indiana. Noah required two heart surgeries and was in the hospital for four months. Bracho, who had been sent back to Mexico, wasn't able to be by his wife's side and didn't meet his sons until they were half a year old.
Andara and Bracho say that their entire ordeal could have been avoided if they hadn't hired a Miami-based immigration attorney named Rolando Vazquez.
Vazquez refers to himself as the "Angel of the Border," and boasts that he's never lost an asylum case—even though asylum cases have become extremely difficult to win in recent years. His Instagram account, where Vazquez seems to find most of his business, features emotional videos of clients expressing their gratitude for all that he's done for them. With his cherubic face and gentle manner, Vazquez often appears in the videos, looking on with earnest humility.
Vazquez, who is of Mexican descent, has alluded to the fact that one day he plans to run for political office. His wife, Sabina Conteras came from Venezuela, and she has helped him find a niche working with immigrants who've been threatened, tortured, and imprisoned by the sham democracy led by Nicolás Maduro.
"He's one of the best in South Florida," Vazquez's attorney, Robert Harris, told Reason. "And I believe he's number one in the representation in immigration court of Venezuelans. Number one!"
Andara and Bracho are now part of a community of Vazquez's ex-clients who are organizing to get him disbarred. They've come together in two WhatsApp groups, with about 60 total members, to commiserate about Vazquez's alleged misdeeds and prepare formal complaints to submit to the Florida Bar. The two groups also have a handful of volunteers who are helping with Spanish to English translation.
Over the past few weeks, they've submitted 15 complaints, and they're planning to introduce 10 more this week. The Florida Bar currently has six open cases against Vazquez, according to a spokesperson, all of which have advanced to the second stage in its review process. The complaints aren't publicly available, but several former clients shared their submissions with Reason, which include copies of email and text correspondences. They allege that Vazquez and his staff "scammed" them by doing little or nothing to advance the cases he was paid to take on and that he didn't answer or return their calls. Several ex-clients are also accusing Contreras, who serves as the firm's office manager and senior paralegal, of verbally abusing them and demanding additional payment, even though the terms of their original contracts hadn't been fulfilled.
"These are claims by customers who didn't receive a good result" so they "attack a lawyer for his confidence or his professionalism because they wanted their case to go better," attorney Brian Barakat, told Reason. Barakat, who is representing Vazquez in his dealings with the Florida Bar, says that he has reviewed two of the claims so far, both of which were rejected. "I fully expect all of the claims to be dismissed," Barakat said.
In testimony that Andara submitted to the Bar, she described her experience working with Vazquez as "awful and traumatic" asking "kindly" for "justice to be made."She alleges that Vazquez missed a crucial hearing that took place over the phone, which led to a two-month postponement. In the meantime, the immigration courts closed down because of COVID-19, putting Andara, Bracho, and tens of thousands of other asylum claimants in limbo. After Andara became pregnant and needed emergency medical attention, she says that Vazquez declined to help her gain permission to enter the United States.
According to emails that the couple shared with Reason, Andara and Bracho paid Vazquez $4,000 to represent them, but after the twins were born, Sabina Contreras demanded $750 more to continue representing Andara, and an additional $2,500 to continue representing Bracho, on the grounds that their decision to cross the border had changed the terms of their cases. According to Andara's testimony submitted to the Florida Bar, Contreras was "verbally abusive…to the point that she even told me in that call that she wished [for] my babies' death."
"You act as if the additional work required by your illegal entry will be done for free," Contreras wrote in an email Andara shared with Reason. "I'll remind you again that the judge and lawyer for ICE are being informed of all your lies and malicious accusations," she wrote. When she told Contreras she would find a different lawyer, Andara says that Contreras attempted to charge them thousands more to drop their case and to return their paperwork.
U.S. immigration law has long been rife with attorneys who take money from clients and then do little to advance their cases.
"It's very easy to make a lot of money losing asylum cases for $10,000 each and never really face any consequences," says immigration attorney Brian Hoffman, who's the executive director of the nonprofit Ohio Center for Strategic Immigration Litigation & Outreach. "This problem has been extremely severe and endemic for as long as I can remember."
Quality legal representation is expensive because litigating an immigration case requires navigating a mountain of red tape and the rules are constantly changing, so immigrants like Andara become easy targets for discount practitioners who promise big but never deliver.
Vazquez and Contreras declined our interview request, but they did connect us with Harris, another one of their attorneys, who maintained that the charges against his clients are fabricated. "To the extent that people are saying that Mr. Vasquez and people associated with this firm are, quote, 'abandoning them or scamming them,' I think is beyond the pale," Harris said.
"Sometimes these people are very belligerent and they just don't understand," said Harris, "particularly when they come from countries like Venezuela, Ecuador, and the like. And many times they don't understand the processes here in the United States, and when they don't get the results that they were looking for, they demand that the money be paid back."
Several of Vazquez's accusers say they were too frightened to speak out until the investigative journalist Patricia Poleo, a winner of the prestigious King of Spain Journalism Award, and a Venezuelan political asylee herself, set out to expose him. Over the past month, she has been sharing video testimony from Vazquez's former clients on her nightly show, Agárrate.
On November 10, Vazquez sued Poleo in Miami Civil Court, along with four of his former clients who appeared on her show. The lawsuit denies all of the allegations, and asserts that by attacking Vazquez, Poleo engaged in "unfair business practices" by trying to destroy his law practice to benefit other immigration lawyers who advertise on her show. "Poleo kept secret from the consumers her financial interest to destroy Plaintiffs," the complaint states, "so that she can get clients and divert them to her business partners."
Harris told Reason that his client is planning to amend the complaint to also charge Poleo with defamation. "I'm a First Amendment guy, I get it," Harris told Reason. "But she's going beyond."
In a since-deleted Instagram video (which Poleo captured and has been running on her nightly political show), Vazquez and Contreras hurled insults at Poleo. "You're not a person of God—you're a bitch," Contreras shouted.
Vazquez claims to be a prominent opponent of the Venezuelan government. "The Chavistas hate me because I won't help them," he said. "Patricia is a closeted Chavista," shouted Contreras, "and it pains her that Rolando is helping the detained by rescuing them from the claws of the Maduro regime." The lawsuit also asserts that Poleo's animus towards Vazquez is driven by her "hatred" of his political views.
It's a surprising claim to make about Patricia Poleo, who was exposing Hugo Chávez's efforts to undermine Venezuela's constitutional democracy back when he was still a darling of the left. In 2004, as editorial director of the newspaper El Nuevo País, Poleo was accused of "instigating rebellion" for sharing a video that demonstrated that Cubans had infiltrated the Venezuelan National Guard, which is one of several instances in which her reporting embarrassed the socialist government. The same year, her investigation of the suspicious killing of a Venezuelan prosecutor led the secret police to search her residence and call her before a military court. In 2005, when the government issued a warrant for her arrest in that case, Poleo escaped to the U.S. while hidden away on a boat and was granted asylum. The Venezuelan government responded by putting out a notice for her to be detained and extradited through INTERPOL, and Poleo was arrested in 2010 at an airport in Peru and held for several hours. The matter was dropped when the agency accepted that the attempt to prosecute Poleo was politically motivated.
The Chávez and Maduro regimes for years have used bogus defamation lawsuits, among other tactics, to silence journalists and shutter newspapers critical of the government. In 2004, Poleo herself was sued for defamation by Jesse Chacón, Minister of Interior and Justice under Chávez, for embarrassing him in the pages of El Nuevo País. She was stripped of her political rights, including her right to vote, and was sentenced to a six-month term in prison, though she didn't end up serving any time.
After relocating to Miami, Poleo continued her hard-nosed reporting on the Venezuelan government and its network of corruption. In 2015, she published a story in the Doral News alleging that the Miami businessman Gianfranco Rondón served as the "bag man" for Diosdado Cabello, the second most powerful political figure in Venezuela, who is wanted by the U.S. Department of State on allegations of "corrupt and violent narco-terrorism." After the story appeared, Rondon sued Poleo and her boss at the paper, Gianfranco Napolitano, for defamation and racketeering, accusing Napolitano of trying to extort him for $5 million in exchange for dropping the story. The charges were dismissed.
In a recent Instagram live video, Poleo mocked Vazquez's lawsuit and warmly greeted her fans, while taking enthusiastic bites of a ham and cheese sandwich. She assured her audience that if she was willing to risk her freedom by speaking truth to the Chávez regime, she wasn't about to be silenced by a Miami immigration attorney. "There isn't a judge in the U.S. who will demand that I stay silent because the First Amendment is freedom of speech," she said while smiling and waving the legal complaint in her hand.
Barakat, Vazquez's attorney before the Florida Bar, claimed in an interview with Reason that Poleo is trying to "extort" Vazquez, but when pressed, said that he has no evidence of her receiving or requesting payment from Vazquez or anyone else. He pointed to Rondón's defamation and racketeering suit, claiming that it shows "a pattern of somebody who deliberately attempts to ruin the reputation of people that she targets in an effort to either benefit herself or benefit others."
When I asked Poleo about the allegation of "extortion," she said she would respond publicly on her show that evening. In her opening monologue, Poleo reflected back on the Gianfranco Rondón lawsuit cited by Barakat. Her reporting, she said, led the FBI to freeze his assets, and Rondón fled to Russia. "My 'pattern' of behavior is denouncing thieves, criminals, corrupt actors, and Chavistas," Poleo said, "and I do it with dignity and a lot of pride."
Vazquez and her attorneys have no substantive response to the allegations, she said, so their only defense is to attack her. "I haven't made a single dollar from this," in contrast to Barakat, "who is being paid with money that [Vazquez and Contreras] took from immigrants."
Barakat also told Reason that Vazquez's ex-clients are being manipulated by Poleo. "Whether they believe the facts are true or whether they're making them up," he told Reason, "I'm suggesting that they're all being coached by Ms. Poleo."
Those ex-clients have congregated on WhatsApp, where they message each other at all hours of the night, strategize, share alleged horror stories, and offer encouragement and emotional support. One of the groups is called Desenmascarando a Rolando, which means "unmasking Rolando," and its members have taken to referring to the self-described "Angel of the Border" as "The Devil of the Border," or Robando, which means "robbing" and is a play on his first name, "Rolando." Poleo, who is an active member of the group, said she makes no secret of the fact that she's assisting in the effort to get Vazquez disbarred. "I will advise them, I will support them, I will help them, because on top of being a journalist, I'm a Venezuelan," she told her audience.
If the allegations against Vazquez are true, how does he obtain the glowing video testimonies that populate his Instagram feed?
The case of Neleidy Aguilar may provide a clue. She appeared in a video that Vazquez shared on his feed testifying that he's "a very good lawyer and very accomplished…I recommend him to the entire world!"
That video was captured during Aguilar's initial consultation with Vazquez on July 31, 2020, in Orlando. Aguilar says that although she hadn't worked with him yet, she agreed to record an endorsement because their dealings had been positive up to that point. "I said what I really believed to be true at that moment," she told Reason.
Aguilar had been forced to flee Venezuela when she and her husband, Leonardo González, acted as whistleblowers in exposing a corrupt judge. The local police responded by kidnapping and beating them. Aguilar, who was pregnant at the time, says she suffered a placental detachment from being punched in the stomach. González nearly died from his injuries.
Upon entering the U.S., González was taken to the Eden Detention Center in Texas and held for 7 months, while Aguilar and her 10-year-old son, Sebastian, were allowed into the country. A severe asthmatic, González nearly died from lack of medical attention, and he missed the birth of their baby girl, Paula.
Aguilar alleges that Vazquez did nothing to advance her case. He never registered with the court as her attorney and never submitted her petition for asylum. "Mrs. Neleidy, I told you that your case is not a priority, and you are not allowed to call," Contreras told her over the phone, according to the complaint that Aguilar filed with the Florida Bar. "If you call again I will charge you $300."
She hired a different lawyer.
Another alleged victim is Annia Marquez, who also appeared in an Instagram video endorsing Vazquez. She later appeared on Poleo's show speaking out against him. Marquez is one of the four former clients who Vazquez is suing for defamation.
Marquez fled Venezuela because of political persecution—she was in hiding from the secret police for more than a year. When she arrived in the U.S., Marquez was taken to Eloy Detention Center in Arizona, where she spent 10 months incarcerated. She says she was held in a 7-by-10-foot cell, with one 20-minute break per day. She received one meal daily, consisting of a ham sandwich and peanut butter cookie, although she says she rarely felt hungry because she was overcome with anxiety.
Marquez says that she would have been released from detention much earlier if Vazquez, who her sister found on Instagram, hadn't failed to appear at three of her hearings in a row, leading the judge in her case to issue a series of monthlong postponements. The attorney Harris told Reason: "I think that [Mr. Vazquez] showed up at all the hearings that he had to show up for." (Marquez shared court records with Reason that support her account.)
Vazquez did show up at the fourth hearing, and Marquez had to pay his travel expenses amounting to about $6,000, which included a first-class plane ticket, she says.
After Marquez was granted asylum and moved to Miami, Contreras and Vazquez invited her to come work for them, and she accepted.
"When one leaves a detention center like that, they're very vulnerable," Marquez told Reason, explaining why she would accept a job for someone who she accuses of so badly mishandling her case. Shortly after starting the job, they asked her to record a video for social media recommending their services.
"I felt like I couldn't say no," Marquez said. She alleged that during her month and a half working in Vazquez's law office, she saw him commit malpractice in more than 20 cases. She is planning to submit testimony of what she witnessed to the Florida Bar.
Today Marquez works for a shipping company in Miami and is paying back the money she borrowed from her godfather to pay Vazquez. Her three kids, ages 7, 17, and 19, have been living alone in Venezuela since her mother died of COVID-19 two months ago.
Geraldine Mora is another of Vazquez's alleged victims who has appeared on Poleo's show. She is the subject of a feature-length documentary produced by Reason, which I'm co-directing in collaboration with the independent filmmaker Claudia Murray, that chronicles the economic and political collapse of Venezuela.
Mora fled the country after her father, Carlos, was imprisoned and tortured by the Maduro regime. Mora, her husband, Brian, and son, David, became Vazquez's clients while applying for political asylum and living on the Mexican border.
Vazquez charged Mora $6,000, with a $2,500 down payment followed by monthly installments paid out over 10 months. At the beginning of February 2020, two days before Mora's first scheduled hearing in Texas, the family's first monthly installment of $350 was three days past due because they were struggling to come up with the money.
Mora's mother, Nelsy Núñez, alleges that Contreras called her to demand that she pay the remaining $3,500 within two hours or Vazquez wouldn't show up at the upcoming hearing and wouldn't submit her asylum application to the court. I was in Miami filming with the Mora family as they navigated this crisis, capturing a tearful interview with Núñez in a Miami parking lot as the family considered what to do.
Barakat declined to comment on the specifics of Mora's case, but told Reason that "unlike what Ms. Poleo says in her reporting, you don't have to work if you're not paid."
Hoffman, who has no direct knowledge of Vazquez's handling of the Mora case, told Reason that demanding payment in exchange for submitting documentation violates an attorney's basic rules of conduct. If you're going to withdraw your services, you're required "to do it with enough time in advance so that the client can make other arrangements."
"Saying, 'I'm not going to do this unless you pay me right now,' to me that sounds like extortion," Hoffman says.
Mora and Conteras worked out an arrangement, but Vazquez didn't show up at the February 3 hearing regardless, according to Mora, and the judge told her that there was no record of her paperwork and no registered attorney on file. She also alleges that Vazquez went long stretches without returning her calls, while Contreras continued to verbally harass her.
Meanwhile, Vazquez dropped her case. Núñez says that on top of the $6,000 legal fee, the family spent $2,800 to get documents supporting their case translated and notarized at Contreras' request. With the exception of one form that was returned, Mora says his office still has all of the original documents and is ignoring the family's pleas to return them. (Reason has reviewed text messages that support this claim.)
Vazquez' $6,000 fee was a heavy burden for the Mora family, but considering the obstacles involved in winning, it's a small amount of money.
"The U.S. government has created an asylum system where it's almost impossible to win," Hoffman told Reason. "So if you really want to take on an asylum case and litigate it well, [often] the person who's applying for asylum just doesn't have the financial resources to pay for that amount of time."
Of the 71,071 asylum claims assigned to the "Remain in Mexico" program, 32,234 applications have been denied, 25,684 are still pending, and just 740 individuals, or one percent of applicants, have been granted asylum or asylum-like protection in the U.S. And just 10 percent were represented by attorneys during their proceedings.
Hoffman, whose work is funded by charitable donations, cited the case of one asylum applicant from El Salvador who he's representing. "We've probably gotten a quarter of a million dollars worth of free legal work over the last four years with this guy, and the case still is probably going to go on for two more years."
On Thanksgiving, members of the WhatsApp group "Unmasking Rolando" shared pictures of their turkeys, and Poleo published a special episode of her show featuring members of this "new family that I acquired at the end of the year—a family of immigrants who have been through moments that are terrible, tragic, and very difficult."
Several ex-Vazquez clients submitted videos expressing what they're grateful for, including Annia Marquez, who said she was thankful to the U.S. "for opening its doors for me, allowing me to develop as a person, to live in freedom, so as to not feel persecuted." With Noah and Nathan on their laps, Aleidy Andara and Javier Bracho expressed their thanks "to this beautiful country" that "gave us a quality of life for our sons, for the opportunity not to be persecuted, and to grow as a family."
And Poleo herself expressed thanks to "the United States—for giving me the freedom to have an independent platform in which I'm able to give a voice to these immigrants."
Translation assistance by María Jose Inojosa Salina.
Democrats say President Joe Biden won "a strong mandate." His government can do all sorts of good things!
I don't believe he has a mandate, but thanks to the selfishness of former President Donald Trump, Democrats control Congress, and that may give them power to shove their worst ideas down our throats. Those include:
No. 1: Hate speech laws.
No. 2: Expanding the Supreme Court.
No. 3: Gun control.
No. 4: Spending much more.
Unfortunately, they don't seem to have noticed that these "reforms" were just tried in a country near us. My new video reveals how they worked out (spoiler alert: badly).
Venezuela became progressives' "it" country when Hugo Chavez became president.
Celebrities like Danny Glover, Susan Sarandon, and Michael Moore showered him with praise. Sean Penn called him "one of the most important forces we've had on this planet."
"You have to be blind to believe that," responds Andres Guilarte of The Fund for American Studies.
Guilarte is one of many Venezuelans who risked his life to protest socialist rule. When the protests failed, he came to the United States as a refugee.
Today, protest is even riskier in Venezuela, because of progressive reform No. 1: the "Law Against Hatred."
Half of America's Democrats support that, says a YouGov poll.
They should rethink what they want, says Guilarte, because "the ruling party…[gets to decide] what hate speech is."
In Venezuela, critics of the government now face jail time.
No. 2: Some Democrats want to add four new justices to the Supreme Court. Sen. Ed Markey (D–Mass.) says the new justices would "restore balance" after years of Republican rule.
Chavez added justices to Venezuela's Supreme Court.
He "changed it from 20 people to 32 people," says Guilarte. After that, "the court never ruled against him." It let him shut down opposition media and confiscate 1,000 private businesses.
No. 3: American Democrats want gun control.
In Venezuela now, only the army, police, and certain favored groups may have guns. That made it even easier for officials to come to people's homes and take their property.
"You're just in your shop, selling shoes," explains Guilarte. "Some government officer arrives and says, 'We're going to shut down your business.' That would be completely different if that business owner had a gun."
"But the government would just come in with bigger guns," I suggest.
"If we had a culture like you have in the U.S.," Guilarte responds, "It would have been incredibly difficult."
Venezuela's gun control didn't even reduce crime. In fact, Venezuela's murder rate rose. Venezuela now has the third-highest murder rate in the world.
"These laws never work," says Guilarte. "Citizens don't have guns. But the criminals have bigger guns!"
No. 4: The most important lesson from Venezuela is the idea that governments can fund whatever they want to do simply by printing more money.
"The federal government can never run out of money," says Modern Monetary Theory economist Stephanie Kelton. She's convinced politicians that they can spend much more without worrying about inflation.
"Well, of course, John," replies Guilarte, sarcastically. "That's how the economy works. You just print money because money comes up from trees."
Venezuela printed money and won praise from progressives by spending some on programs they said would help the poor. But the poor and the middle class were crushed by the inflation that followed: 20 percent…then 100 percent…3,000 percent…40,000 percent! This destroyed Venezuela.
Inflation in America has risen to 5.4 percent. Bad, but of course, nothing close to what happened in Venezuela.
"Doesn't mean that it can't happen!" warns Guilarte.
That, unfortunately, is true.
"We were the richest economy in Latin America," he points out. "People from America came to Venezuela to build businesses."
Now the country is in shambles.
"Everything can fall to the ground really quickly," says Guilarte. "Inflation is like a cancer. You never know when it's going to hit you."
Let's learn from socialism's failures.
The idea that massive government spending and other progressive feel-good policies will help America, when these same ideas failed horribly elsewhere, is a dangerous myth.
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Daniel Raisbeckhttps://reason.com/people/daniel-raisbeck/https://reason.com/?p=81247712021-07-22T05:25:48Z2021-07-22T12:00:12Z
As global trends pushed Cuba's chronically depressed economy into a devastating crisis, the island faced one of two scenarios. On the one hand, a popular reaction "sparked by a growing scarcity of goods, with street protests and possible riots as a general rehearsal for a great national uprising." On the other, "a conspiracy of high-ranking military officers," whose leaders fear that an unyielding communist dictator "will drag them all down as the regime falters."
Sowrote Cuban exile Carlos Alberto Montaner in 1994. The collapse of the Soviet Union, which had kept Cuba barely afloat—but only bysubsidizing around 23 percent of its GDP between 1985 and 1988—had dealt dictator Fidel Castro a serious blow. Desperate, he promised that "the island would sink into the sea before capitalism returns." Castro's insistence on maintaining Cuban communism intact even asrelics of the Berlin Wall traveled the world in the form of commercial memorabilia elicited paleontological metaphors. Portuguese President Mário Soaresreferred to Castro as a political dinosaur; "a respected species, albeit endangered." ABC, a Spanish newspaper, went a step further andbranded Castro "the last tyrannosaurus." The end seemed nigh. "Cuban communism," wrote Montaner, "doesn't have the slightest chance of prevailing without Moscow's constant and nourishing tutelage."
Alas, the closest thing to a mass revolt in post-Soviet Cuba was a protest at Havana's esplanade, the Malecón, by several hundred people in 1994. The so-called Maleconazo saw a huge turnout against the regime by the island's totalitarian standards, but it wasn't exactly the Storming of the Bastille. Castro, however, feared the evident unease enough to allow tens of thousands of Cubans to embark north on precarious rafts, a rehash of the Mariel boatlift tactics of 1980, when125,000 seafaring refugees, among them many convicts, unleashed an immigration crisis in South Florida.
The longed-for officers' coup against Castro, an undying hope of the exile community in Miami, proved to be as elusive as a popular insurrection. Perhaps even more so given that Castro, after seizing power in 1959, had turned the Cuban military into a highly ideologized, fiercely loyal force, where allegiance to orthodox communism and to Castro himself was the sine qua non of promotion. As one scholar wrote in 1976, graduates of the Cuban military academy, 90 percent of whom were members of the Communist Party, had been drilled with "the principles of Marxism-Leninism" and "an almost Maoist orientation toward the role of consciousness." Indoctrination aside, Montaner explained, Cuba's military was not an independent, republican institution, but rather a body which the Castro brothers, Fidel and Raul, created, "with more traits of a leader's personal band than of official armed forces."
Fidel Castro survived the Cold War by turning Cuba, a country that was on the cusp of development in 1959, into an impoverished barnacle parasitically attached to the Soviet mother ship. Parasitism again saved Castro not long after the USSR became history. In 1994, as many predicted Castro's imminent demise, the tyrant paid an official tribute in Havana to a former Venezuelan lieutenant colonel named Hugo Chávez, who had led a failed yet bloody coup against President Carlos Andrés Pérez in 1992. During the lavishceremony, Castro applauded as Chávez, fresh out of jail after receiving a pardon from Venezuelan President Rafael Caldera, hailed Cuba as "a bastion of Latin American dignity." He also proclaimed his intentions to launch "a revolutionary project" and to turn all of Latin America "into the single nation that we are."
Only four years later, Castro's new protege was elected president of Venezuela, the country that would have the world'slargest oil reserves by 2010. In 2011, Venezuela was covering 61 percent of Cuba's energy needs with a constant and increasing oil supply, exporting an average of 105,000 barrels per day to the island between 2007 and 2014. In return for such largesse, Cuba exported to Venezuela its own comparative advantage, refined for decades under Castro's unparalleled expertise: namely, political repression of the most brutal variety, albeit under the guise of revolutionary humanitarianism.
In 2000, the two countries signed anagreement whereby Venezuela would send Cuba an initial 53,000 barrels of oil per day in exchange for the "gratuitous medical services" of "Cuban specialist doctors and health care technicians." In 2012, Chávezclaimed there were over 44,000 Cuban doctors, nurses, ophthalmologists, and therapists working in seven "medical missions" in Venezuela. Julio César Alfonso, an exiled Cuban doctor, describes such missions, which were replicated at a smaller scale in dozens of other countries, as "a booming business for the Cuban government, and a form of modern slavery." In fact, the state's earnings, which accounted for the equivalent of USD $6.4 billion in 2018— nearly twice the amount Cubans received from cash remittances—hinge on allowing the medical personnel tokeep, at best, a mere quarter of their wages based on the amount Cuba receives per professional.
The humanitarian facade concealed a silent invasion. In 2018, Luis Almagro, the secretary-general of the Organization of American States,revealed that at least 22,000 Cubans had infiltrated the Venezuelan state, particularly the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service. The infamous Helicoide in Caracas, the headquarters of this ruthless spy agency that Chávez created in 2009, is a well-knowntorture chamber. According to a 2019 CASLA Institutestudy, members of Cuba's Intelligence Directorate, commonly known as G2, had their own base of operations in Caracas and were directly involved in the Venezuelan regime's systematic use of torture against political opponents. Under expert Cuban guidance, Venezuela even turned its intelligence services "on its own armed forces, instilling fear and paranoia and quashing dissent," as Reutersreported in 2019.
Cuban operatives also have provided security for both Chávez and his successor, Nicolás Maduro. In 2019, when journalistJorge Ramos and his Univision colleagues were held by Maduro's forces after an abortedinterview attempt in the Miraflores Palace, team members detected the Cuban accents of several men within the dictator's innermost security circle.
If the two countries had become "a single nation," as Chávez himselfassured in 2007, it was because Cuba, that bastion of anti-imperialist Latin American dignity, turned the far larger and richer Venezuela into a colony. Rich, that is, until Cuban and Cuba-backed communists took over. In 2001, at the outset of Chávez's presidency, Venezuela was South America'srichest country; recently, it was declaredpoorer than Haiti.
As Venezuela spiraled toward itshumanitarian collapse, colonial policy dictated that Fidel Castro's successors at the helm of the Cuban regime—initially his brother Raul, thereafter Communist Party bureaucrat Miguel Díaz-Canel—summon all their mastery in the arts of intimidation to keep Maduro in power. The Cubans were instrumental in suppressing the massiveprotests against Chavismo in 2017; in implementing the "revolving-door" technique, whereby certain political prisoners are set free while new ones are incarcerated; and inluring the hapless opposition into dead-end negotiations each time the regime was against the wall. Over the years, in fact, I've seen enough reports about Maduro's certain downfall so as to take the recent, euphoric assurances about the Cuban dictatorship's imminent end with a grain of salt.
Whether or not the current protests in Cuba endanger the tyranny, they do contain several levels of irony. Not least since the regime that exports doctors and nurses as if they were commodities and touts its decrepit health care system as a global example,fooling gullible Western intellectuals such as Michael Moore, is now facing popular unrest due, in large part, to a severe health care crisis. Although the media has claimed that the pandemic brought the Cuban health care system to the brink of breakdown, this is nothing new. In 2015, a PanAm Postreportervisited a Havana hospital undercover, only to find shortages of basic medical supplies, improvised stretchers, filthy bathrooms lacking doors or toilet paper, wards staffed only by medical students, and patients forced to supply their own sheets, pillows, and medicine. In recent weeks, heightened attention and a broader use of social media tools have made this reality evident to anyone willing to pay attention.
Another irony is that, while Chávez referred to Cuba as an inspiration to the Latin American youth—to this day, an image ofserial killer Che Guevaraoverlooks the main square at Colombia's National University—it is now the young, tech-savvy Cubans, some of them prominentartists, who are denouncing the regime most effectively. Perhaps it's the inevitable effect of depriving the TikTok generation of internet access, let alone the most basic liberties, which they nowdemand. Perhaps Castro's death as a nonagenarian despot in 2016 and his eventual replacement with Díaz-Canel, a drab, middle-aged apparatchik, exhausted any remnants of the Cuban revolution's youthful charm of the 1950s, when TheNew York Times' Herbert L. Matthewspraised Castro as "the rebel leader of Cuba's youth," and Castroassured a star-struck Ed Sullivan that Fulgencio Batista would "be the last dictator of Cuba."
Finally, there is the boomerang nature of the current protests. In late 2019, as vandals destroyed public infrastructure and private property across much of Santiago, Chile's capital, Maduroclaimed that "the plan" he and his allies had concocted some months earlier at the São Paulo Forum, an annual gathering of left-wing parties, was working "perfectly." One of his underlingsbragged that a "Bolivarian breeze" was blowing across the region. These weren't empty boasts; Venezuela and Cuba have certainly fomented mayhem in South America's constitutional republics. In May, as violent protests engulfed Colombia, that country's governmentexpelled a Cuban diplomat for carrying out "activities that were incompatible" with his diplomatic role. Now that Cuba's supposedly submissive population is bravely standing up for its freedom in Havana itself, rumors abound of Cubans stationed in Venezuela being summoned back to the island to quash the rebellion. It's a classic case of imperial overreach, much like that of Spartans lording it over much of Greece, only to face a sudden helot revolt at home.
It was a Greek historian, Polybius, who described the cyclical nature of revolutions: In their various forms, one-man rule, oligarchy, and democracy tend to succeed one another. With time, even the Cuban Revolution might see its tyrants fall.
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Daniel Raisbeckhttps://reason.com/people/daniel-raisbeck/https://reason.com/?post_type=video&p=81168602021-05-26T18:28:51Z2021-05-20T16:20:47Z
When the venture capitalist Delian Asparouhovsuggested on Twitter last December that the tech industry should migrate from Silicon Valley to Miami, Mayor Francis Suarez (R) responded, "How can I help?" He also set up a billboard in San Francisco.
"Thinking of moving to Miami?," it read. "DM me."
Suarez's bold, roll-out-the-red-carpet approach to luring away Silicon Valley's tech elite has gotten so much attention, in part, because of how it contrasts with that of California's ultra-left political class. Take San Diego Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (D), who's best known for her failed effort to stop Uber and Lyft from using contract labor in California to benefit labor unions. Gonzalez tweeted "Fuck Elon Musk" back in May of 2020.
"Message Received," replied Musk. In Miami, on the other hand, Mayor Suarez has embraced Musk's idea of building a $30 million tunnel for electric vehicles to ease congestion.
Suarez's publicity stunts, including fashioning himself an avid bitcoin enthusiast, have no doubt contributed to the city's momentum. He wants to turn Miami into a "confluence of capital," as he told Reason.
"We have the entire financial sector from New York," Suarez said. "We're going to see is a confluence of capital from New York and from Los Angeles, Silicon Valley, and San Francisco. That confluence of capital, we've never seen merge anywhere in the history of humanity."
But billionaires buying waterfront mansions won't shape the future of Miami. Immigration will. Latin American ex-pats don't garner headlines or donate much to political campaigns, but they have grit and talent that was largely wasted in the socialist countries from which they fled—not to mention their cultural aversion to big government liberalism and the woke ideology now prevalent in the Bay Area.
Miami's ascendence in the 21st Century hinges on whether it can continue to fulfill its role as the greatest city in Latin America that just happens to be located in the United States.
Written and narrated by Daniel Raisbeck; shot and edited by John Osterhoudt; opening by Paul Detrick, graphic design by Nathalie Walker; animation by NODEHAUS, and Isaac Reese; color correction by Regan Taylor; additional audio production by Ian Keyser.
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Maria Iberico Gioiahttps://reason.com/people/maria-iberico-gioia/Marc Joffehttps://reason.com/people/marc-joffe/https://reason.com/?p=81131582021-04-21T20:51:25Z2021-04-22T12:30:57Z
Pedro Castillo, a self-described Marxist-Leninist heading the Peru Libre ("Free Peru") ticket, has secured a spot in the country's June 6 presidential runoff election. The only person standing between him and power is Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of a former president who assumed dictatorial control in the 1990s and the leader of Fuerza Popular ("Popular Force"), a right-wing populist political party. If Castillo wins, he threatens to impose the same sort of ruinous policies that have decimated Venezuela.
Peru Libre's platform calls for an economic transformation that would include nationalization of the mining, gas, oil, hydro-energy, and communications industries; agrarian reform which will include land expropriation and might involve land redistribution; elimination of private pensions; voiding contracts with the companies that are currently in charge of managing airports, railways, ports, and highways, and transferring these functions to regional governments and municipalities; and reviewing all trade agreements with an eye toward abrogating at least some of them.
Some of these measures were tried unsuccessfully by the military government of left-wing General Velasco Alvarado (1968-1975). During the so-called agrarian reform carried out by that regime,some 15,000 properties (totaling nine million hectares) were taken by force from private owners for which they received inadequate compensation. The lands were mismanaged by the new owners who lacked the training required to successfully oversee large farms.
The Peru Libre platform is reminiscent of that of Venezuelan socialist Hugo Chavez. For example, Chavez nationalized Venezuela's oil industry in 2005. Not only did state mismanagement prove fatal, but the lack of private investment also contributed to the demise of the once-mighty Venezuelan industry. Castillo's plans to nationalize Peru's powerhouse copper industry will lead to similarly tragic results. If Castillo wins, expect both government mismanagement and an output collapse that will cripple the nation's copper production.
Venezuela's economic collapse under Chavez also triggered a vast outmigration to Peru and other South American countries. Of theroughly five million people who have fled Venezuela, about one million moved to Peru, which is second only to Colombia as a destination for emigrants from the Bolivarian Republic. With Venezuelans accounting for about 3 percent of the country's resident population, Peruvian citizens are frequently confronted by the results of socialist transformation. Many Peruvians complain that the Venezuelan influx has created more competition for certain jobs, driving down wages. Given this palpable result of Chavismo, it may seem odd that a domestic advocate of this failed ideology would win a plurality of presidential votes.
Although Castillo is an educator and holds a graduate degree in educationalpsychology, he appears to have a weak grasp on policy issues. Asked about antitrust in a recent interview, the candidate identified a leading supermarket chain and a major department store as monopolies, despite the fact that they both have robust domestic competition.
Apparently, Castillo is not the brains behind Peru Libre. Mirko Vidal, a Peruvian libertarian who offers political commentary on YouTube, has pointed out that the party's thought leadership comes from Vladimir Cerrón, a former provincial governor. Cerrón was removed from office after being convicted for corruption and abuse of power in awarding a sanitation contract in his prior role as mayor of La Oroya. His 2019 conviction came with a 56-month prison sentence and a civil penalty of PEN 850,000 (roughly equivalent to $234,000).
The ideology that Cerrón and Castillo are promoting will be distressingly familiar to older Peruvians, who will remember the depredations of Sendero Luminoso (known in English as the Shining Path). This Maoist terrorist organization occupied huge swaths of the nation's interior during the late 20th century, and the conflict it caused is believed to have resulted in almost 70,000 deaths.
Peru Libre's ideology more closely matches that of a rival Marxist terrorist group, the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (whose Spanish acronym is MRTA). Both Peru Libre and MRTA were inspired by the work of José Carlos Mariátegui, an influential Peruvian Marxist theorist active in the 1920s. Mariátegui reoriented Marxism to Peruvian realities, by, for example, arguing that a revolution could be led by indigenous peasants rather than factory workers and that a fully developed capitalist system was not a necessary precondition as Karl Marx had originally argued.
Mariategui's reformulation resonated with Peru's indigenous people who were marginalized and excluded from political power ever since Spain supplanted the Incas. He also jettisoned Marxian atheism, recognizing the importance of Catholicism to the indigenous population.
Among MRTA's members was the American socialist Lori Berenson, who returned to the U.S. in 2015 after serving a 20-year prison sentence. In 1997, MRTA staged a four-month-long takeover of the Japanese Embassy in Lima, holding hundreds hostage. The standoff ended when the Peruvian military assaulted the building, freeing most of the diplomatic hostages while killing or capturing most of the MRTA operatives. By 2001, the revolutionary movement was defunct, to be replaced a few years later by a political party guided by similar principles.
The fact that Castillo polled at the top of the presidential field may be explained by both the number of viable candidates dividing the overall vote and the popular revulsion at Peru's political status quo. Castillo topped a field of 18 other candidates, including 9 who garnered significant vote totals (of over 700,000 or 5 percent each). Hernando de Soto, an economist with libertarian leanings, placed fourth with over 1.6 million votes. A full 18 percent of voters returned blank or spoiled presidential ballots.
Voters appear to have become dismayed by Peru's political chaos and poor governance. After the nation's last elected president, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski (PPK), was obliged to step down in 2018 due to an impeachment threat, the nation has rapidly cycled through three unelected presidents to complete what would have been PPK's five-year term.
The nation has also suffered horrendously during the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite an extremely strict lockdown, the country has experienced a COVID death rate of over 0.17 percent, which is worse than neighboring Chile and Colombia, and not far behind the United States. Although the lockdown failed to prevent widespread mortality, it dealt a severe blow to the nation's economy, which contracted 11 percent in 2020.
The only barrier to a Castillo victory is second-place finisher Keiko Fujimori, a perennial presidential candidate who has reached the runoff stage in the last two presidential elections, only to be defeated by a more popular rival. Although Keiko (who normally uses her first name) appeared to have a historic ceiling of just under 50 percent of the popular vote, it is likely much lower now due to her machinations and those of her party since 2016.
Keiko's father, Alberto Fujimori, is credited with vanquishing Sendero Luminoso and MRTA, but he did so at the cost of dissolving Congress and engaging in massive corruption. After fleeing the country, he was extradited from Chile and now sits in prison. Keiko and her party played a pivotal role in unseating PPK, thus giving rise to the country's recent instability. She was also temporarily jailed for her own alleged corruption offenses.
Popular revulsion against this current member of a prospective Fujimori dynasty may be enough for the socialist Castillo to win the presidency in June. If that occurs, expect mass emigration, economic calamity, and social unrest to follow.
In 2019, Deveís Hernandez couldn't earn enough in Venezuela to keep his wife and two daughters fed, no matter how much he worked. So he spent the last of his savings on a series of bus trips from Puerto La Cruz, a small city on the northeastern coast, to Cúcuta, on the Colombian-Venezuelan border. He took up the gauntlet of a lawless frontier and left his homeland behind in hopes of building a better future.
By the time he crossed the border informally via a smuggling path controlled by criminals, his earthly possessions consisted of two pairs of shoes, a Captain America backpack, the clothes on his back, and a few pairs of socks.
From there he walked about 400 miles to the Colombian capital, Bogota, where he found a job in a recycling center. For a year, he worked under the table for about $9 a day, a bit less than the minimum wage in Colombia, which is $260 a month. He has been saving ever since to send for his family. "I won't make my daughters walk the trochas," he says, using the slang term for dangerous smuggling paths on the border.
So when President Iván Duque announced at the end of February that Colombia would extend full resident status to the almost 2 million Venezuelan migrants in Colombia as well as a path to citizenship, Hernandez was elated.
"This means I can finally get a real job," he says. "With luck, I won't have to live off scraps." He also hopes the measures will make it considerably easier to enroll his daughters in school when they arrive, an issue he has worried about since he lacks even basic paperwork for identification purposes.
Hernandez is one of 5.4 million Venezuelans that the United Nations estimates have fled their country due to violence, insecurity and threats; a collapsed economy; and a lack of food, medicine, and essential services. The International Monetary Fund expects that number to nearly double, to 10 million, by the end of 2023. As of January 2020, more than 1.7 million of those migrants were currently in Colombia.
Colombia will soon be offering migrants a full welcome. Duque's announcement means Colombia will give nearly 2 million immigrants—almost 5 percent of Colombia's total population—the ability to work legally and have access to education and health care systems. Those who register with the government will be put on a path to full citizenship.
Colombia's choice stands in sharp contrast to the United States, where migrants from Central America must wait months on the Southern border in squalid conditions, where mass deportations (even amid a pandemic) are commonplace, and where even immigrants who have lived in the country for 20 years might find themselves ripped away from their families and banished from their new homeland for simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
As politicians in the United States talked of border walls and anchor babies while the government spent hundreds of millions of dollars for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to stalk undocumented migrants, Colombia was conducting the largest open borders experiment the modern world has ever seen.
Since even before the Venezuelan collapse began in earnest in 2015, migrants needed only basic identification to enter Colombia. As former President Barack Obama, and successor Donald Trump, caged those trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border, Colombia was officially welcoming a much larger quantity of refugees in comparison with its population—and with far less resources.
The United States has a GDP 60 times that of Colombia, despite having just over seven times the population. Colombia also has a poverty rate nearly four times that of the U.S., at 35.7 percent.
Yet, in sharp contrast with the U.S. and regional neighbors like Ecuador and Peru, Colombia kept its border open to Venezuelans until the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020. The Venezuelan exodus has been a rare real-life trial case of how mass migration affects host countries. And the data have shown that most of the anti-immigrant arguments heard in both countries couldn't possibly be more wrong.
Economic prophecies of mass unemployment never came to pass. In fact, data from the Colombian central bank suggests that migration may have super-charged the Colombian economy, which experienced record growth between 2015 and 2020 before the pandemic crushed the economies of the entire region. Increased consumer demand, spending due to increased consumption, and a workforce that is often self-employed informally all contributed to a net positive effect on the Colombian economy.
Although migration did depress the wages of low-skilled workers slightly, according to the same labor force study, it had no negative effect on the employment rate. Economists suggest that the new law will allow skilled Venezuelans, such as teachers and engineers, to enter the Colombian job market that they were previously excluded from, as well as lower barriers for those who wish to start businesses.
The net economic impact of the migration has already been positive, and that trend is only likely to increase in the future as migrants move away from the informal job market.
Rumors of secure borders being necessary for security were similarly unfounded. Immigrants in both the United States and Colombia are less likely to commit crimes than natural-born citizens. In fact, their illegal status leaves them more vulnerable. Worldwide, migrants are more likely to be the victims of crime, and are less likely to report those crimes to the police.
"The U.S system leaves illegal immigrants living in fear," Adam Solow, an immigration lawyer in Philadelphia told Reason by phone. "It's effect is to create a second class citizenry who live in the shadows and can be exploited for their labor."
For Hernandez, Colombia's new law is a godsend. He now plans on sending for his wife and daughters, in addition to seeking a better job. "I haven't only been exiled from [the] country," he says. "I've been exiled from my family."
In Colombia, at least, that second part is no longer true. The U.S should learn from Colombia's experience that migration is not a threat to the nation, either economically or existentially, but rather an opportunity to invest in the country's future. Humane immigration policy isn't only the morally correct course of action, it is in our best interests.
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Alex Gladsteinhttps://reason.com/people/alex-gladstein/alex@hrf.orghttps://reason.com/?post_type=video&p=81019572021-02-05T21:25:26Z2021-02-05T17:33:51Z
Bitcoin has won over some of America's best-known billionaires, and institutions worldwide are treating it as a serious financial asset. But bitcoin's rising price is only one part of the story.
Whether they know it or not, people who buy bitcoin are strengthening a tool for protecting human rights. This still relatively new form of electronic money is censorship-resistant, seizure-resistant, borderless, permissionless, pseudonymous, programmable, and peer-to-peer.
In bitcoin, transactions don't go through banks or financial intermediaries. They travel directly from one person to another.
Payment processing is done not by a regulated company such as Visa or Mastercard but by a decentralized global software network. Storage is handled not by a bank but by the users themselves.
Bitcoin issuance isn't determined by central bankers. The currency's creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, set it to have an ultimate limit of 21 million. No one can ever print more.
Bitcoin transactions can't be stopped, and you don't need to reveal your name or address or telephone number to participate. You just need internet access.
In 2017, the economist Paul Krugman described bitcoin as "some fancy technological thing that nobody really understands. There's been no demonstration yet that it actually is helpful in conducting economic transactions. There's no anchor for its value."
Krugman lives in a sheltered environment in a liberal democracy with constitutional protections. His native currency is globally dominant and relatively stable. It's easy for him to open a bank account, to use a mobile app to pay bills, or to grow his wealth by investing in real estate or stocks.
But not everyone has that level of privilege. Around 4.2 billion people live under authoritarian regimes that use money as a tool for surveillance and state control. Their currency is often debased, and they are, for the most part, cut off from the international system that Krugman enjoys. For them, saving and transacting outside the government's purview isn't shady business. It's a way to preserve their freedoms.
In China, if you type or utter one wrong word, the Communist Party might eliminate your financial services. This devastating outcome creates a chilling effect for dissidents and creative minds, who are forced to use the country's increasingly centralized digital economy.
In Hong Kong or Russia, donors to human rights organizations can see their bank accounts suspended and funds seized.
Over the past few months in Belarus and Nigeria, nationwide protests have broken out against tyranny and corruption. In both places, activists raising money to support the democracy movement have had their bank accounts frozen.
Just a few days ago, in Burma's latest coup, the military shut down the banking system and turned off the ATMs.
For activists living under state repression, bitcoin provides a way to preserve their money in cyberspace, locked away by encryption, safe from devaluation, in a network that has never been hacked. For them, it's digital cash and digital gold rolled into one.
And in Cuba, Nigeria, China, Pakistan, Venezuela, Russia, Turkey, Argentina, Palestine, Zimbabwe, and elsewhere, bitcoin is catching on and helping people escape tyranny and currency collapse.
In the past few months, Belarusian activists have used bitcoin to defy the regime by sending more than 3 million dollars of unstoppable money directly to striking workers, who then convert it locally to rubles in peer-to-peer marketplaces to feed their families as they protest the country's dictatorship.
In October, a feminist coalition in Nigeriaraised the equivalent of tens of thousands of dollars in bitcoin to buy gas masks and protest equipment as activist bank accounts were being turned on and off.
In Russia, the opposition politician Alexei Navalny has raised millions in bitcoin as Vladimir Putin maintains strict control over the traditional financial system. Putin can do a lot of things, but he can't freeze a bitcoin account.
In Iran and Palestine and Cuba, individuals face sanctions or embargoes because of the misdeeds of their corrupt rulers. Bitcoin gives them a lifeline for earning income or receiving remittances from abroad.
Some Venezuelans, having watched their country's currency evaporate due to hyperinflation, are converting their resources to bitcoin's digital format and then escaping. With their savings secured by a password that can be stored on a flash drive, phone, or even memorized, they've started new lives in other countries, taking advantage of a technology that refugees throughout history could only dream about.
The citizens of democracies also face financial controls, deplatforming, and an ever-expanding surveillance state. But those lucky enough to live in open societies can vote, sue, protest, and write, and those methods might allow them to protect their financial freedom and privacy. The billions who live under authoritarian governments don't have the same options.
Unlike democracy, bitcoin is universally available. You don't need to have a particular passport or bank card or voting status to use it. No government can turn off your bitcoin if it's threatened by your ideas.
We are in the middle of a great digital transformation, a time when cash, one of the last bastions of privacy and freedom, is disappearing. People rely increasingly on easily surveilled apps such as Apple Pay and AliPay—and, perhaps soon, central bank–issued digital currencies as their primary medium of exchange.
Bitcoin provides an alternative to our increasingly centralized financial system. It gives any activist or journalist a way to raise funds without censorship, a way to save despite the corrosive impact of excessive money printing, and a way to teleport value without permission.
Bitcoin wasn't as powerful five years ago, before it had global liquidity. But today, exchanges have popped up in every region, daily trading volume exceeds that of Apple and other popular stocks, and peer-to-peer marketplaces such as Paxful and LocalBitcoins have extended their reach, enabling users to sell bitcoin for local currency almost anywhere in the world.
Maybe you don't need bitcoin. Maybe you don't understand bitcoin. Maybe PayPal, Venmo, or your bank account serves your needs just fine.
But don't write off bitcoin as simply a vehicle for financial speculation. For millions of people around the world, it's an escape hatch from tyranny—nothing less than freedom money.
Written and narrated by Alex Gladstein. Motion graphics by Lex Villena. Sound design by Isaac Reese and Regan Taylor.
Venezuela has the world's largest proven oil reserves and yet the country has run out of gasoline. The socialist government has lost the capacity to extract oil from the ground or refine it into a usable form. The industry's gradual deterioration was 18 years in the making, tracing back to then-President Hugo Chávez's 2003 decision to fire the oil industry's most experienced engineers in an act of petty political retribution.
The near-total collapse in the nation's oil output in the ensuing years is a stark reminder that the most valuable commodity isn't a natural resource, but the human expertise to put it to productive use.
"At this moment Venezuela is living through its worst nightmare," said Luis Pedro España, a professor of sociology at Andrés Bello Catholic University in Caracas, who has studied the nation's economic collapse. "We are witnessing the end of Venezuela as a petro-state."
Gasoline shortages have crippled the economy, made travel within the country prohibitively expensive, and it has increased prices at grocery stores. Shortages and price restrictions have given rise to a vibrant black market.
"Drivers who operate gas-powered busses prefer to keep them parked so that they can suck out the gas and later resell it," says Andrés, a public bus operator in Caracas, who asked that we only use his first name.
"[My] bus runs on diesel. It uses 16 [or] 17 gallons daily. Nowadays, we have to wait in a long line to fill up," he said. "The gas stations even have national guards who ask for bribes before they'll fill up the tank because the 40 liters that the government gives us isn't enough."
Andrés is allowed special access to fill up his tank because he provides an essential city service. But earning the equivalent of just $200 a month, he struggles to make ends meet. So he keeps his bus parked and extracts gas from the tank to resell on the black market, earning about $8 per gallon. To put that into perspective, the average Venezuelan subsists on less than $10 per day.
The little gas that is still available comes via periodic shipments from Iran. But the Venezuelan government doesn't officially charge at most gas stations. It uses a quota system, so filling a tank can mean waiting in line for days.
David is a mechanic living in Caracas. These days he's making a living by waiting in line to fill up his tank and then extracting the gas to resell on the black market.
"My business isn't selling gas," David says. "It is meeting the needs of my customers."
"A lot of the clients from my repair shop are elderly people—people who can't be standing in line for eight hours, or two days, or three days, or a week. I am the person who is sacrificing my time. Clearly, I have to charge for my time. We all have to make a living."
The Venezuelan oil industry turned a once poor agricultural nation into an important geopolitical player and one of the region's richest countries.
In the mid-1970s, Venezuela nationalized its oil industry, and Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA) was created to manage operations. Though state-owned, the company was given a high level of autonomy and was known as a "state within a state." The nation's oil wealth allowed for a massive investment in infrastructure and the industry attracted talent from all over the world.
"The current administration, in the last 20 to 25 years, destroyed what we built," says Pedro España. What they had built was "economic independence."
"PDVSA once had over 20 refineries around the world," says José Toro Hardy, an economist and former director at PDVSA from 1996-1999. "We were able to move our oil from the nation's subsoil into the tanks of American drivers," he said. "And the entire process was managed by Venezuelan entities with Venezuelan oil wells, pipelines, Venezuelan tankers…We had built something gigantic, but suddenly, we were faced with a costly historic accident: Hugo Chávez won the election.
Chávez held power from 1999 to 2013, when he died of cancer. He dubbed his policy agenda "socialism of the 21st century." It turned one of the most prosperous countries in Latin America into the site of a humanitarian crisis. Chávez rewrote the constitution, clamped down on the freedom of the press, nationalized over a thousand private companies, and destroyed the national currency through hyperinflation.
Chávez sought control of the nation's oil wealth to fund his political ambitions, but first, he had to dismantle the mechanisms that were put in place to protect PDVSA's autonomy.
In a move intended to begin that erosion, Chávez began appointing military leaders to PDVSA's board. The conflict between PDVSA's top management and Chávez culminated in a national strike, which took place from December 2002 to February 2003. Chávez proceeded to fire 18,000 state oil workers, including 80 percent of its top engineers, handing control of the industry to the military.
The workers who were fired had "an average of 15 years of experience," Toro says. "In a sense, he threw away 300 thousand years of experience."
"Now, instead of producing five to six million barrels of oil [a day], which is the amount we should be producing, last month's report from OPEC showed that our production, based on external sources, was 339 thousand barrels per day. After once having been a major player in the oil industry, we've become nothing. An insignificant exporter of oil," he says.
"[T]he erosion of checks and balances and the restructuring of PDVSA, allowed Chávez to convert the oil sector into, in essence, the regime's checking account," wrote the political scientists Javier Corrales and Michael Penfold in their 2011 book, Dragon in the Tropics: Venezuela and the Legacy of Hugo Chávez.
Andrés, the bus driver, believes that if the gas crisis doesn't abate, Venezuela will experience rioting and public unrest. "If there's no more diesel we can't transport food," he said. "Diesel is necessary for heavy shipping, including basic necessities. So people will be out in the streets protesting."
The economic crisis has caused much of the nation's educated middle class to flee the country, which will make rebuilding Venezuela's human capital an even greater challenge. In an ironic twist, Chavez's hand-picked successor, Nicolás Maduro, is now working to bring privately-run foreign oil companies back in.
Produced by Andrés Figueredo Thomson; translation by María José Inojosa Salina.
Music Credits: Homeroad, Nothing, and Run by Kai Engel; Suspect Located by Scott Holmes
Photo Credits: JORGE SILVA/REUTERS/Newscom; Juan Carlos Hernandez/ZUMA Press/Newscom; KIMBERLY WHITE/REUTER/Newscom;
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Justin Monticellohttps://reason.com/people/justin-monticello/https://reason.com/?post_type=video&p=80945042021-02-19T20:59:29Z2020-12-10T15:01:17ZLa Causa is a raw look into these self-organized societies, complete with taxes, courts, and a strict "thug code.”]]>
The inmates have overtaken many prisons in Venezuela, armed with automatic weapons and grenades. They are governed by criminal gangs led by a "pran," or kingpin, who strictly enforces the "thug code" by which all prisoners must abide, or they will be shot in various body parts. It's too dangerous for guards or federal troops to enter, so they patrol the perimeter and train their rifles on any inmate who tries to leave.
Inside the walls, the prisoners have formed functional, independent societies with open-air bazaars offering everything from Coca-Cola to crack cocaine. Several days a week, they welcome their girlfriends, wives, children, and extended families for visits, birthday parties, and even music festivals.
Communal activities are funded by La Causa, or "The Cause," a tax that the prison's de facto government collects from most inmates to purchase goods that come into the facility. If they don't pay, they are sent to The Church, which acts as both a house of worship and a debtors' prison-within-the-prison.
La Causa, a new documentary from 29-year-old filmmaker Andrés Figueredo Thomson, is a raw look at life inside what was, at the time of production, Venezuela's largest prison. Filmed over the course of eight years, the documentary explores the structure of its self-organized society, where dissenters and those deemed social radicals were treated harshly. LGBT inmates, for example, were cast out and forced to live on the roof of a building.
Figueredo Thomson was a 19-year-old high school senior in 2010 when he started capturing remarkable footage inside the prison, as the socialist strongman president Hugo Chavez dismantled democratic institutions and seized control of private businesses. With Venezuela sliding further into authoritarianism, Figueredo Thomson's family was soon targeted.
His stepfather, Guillermo Zuloaga, led one of the last independent media outlets in the country after Chavez seized most of the others. He fought escalating government harassment for years as he continued to expose the vast human cost of the Chavez regime's policies. But the year after Figueredo Thomson began production on La Causa, Chavez declared Zuloaga a political enemy of the revolution, forcing his family to flee to the U.S.
The prison population has exploded in recent years as the regime of Chavez's successor, Nicolas Maduro, has cracked down on mostly poor Venezuelans for alleged petty offenses. La Causa builds to a dramatic finish as the military embarks on a campaign to retake several inmate-run prisons, setting up a showdown in 2016 at the prison where Figueredo Thomson shot most of his footage.
Produced, written, and edited by Justin Monticello. Audio production by Ian Keyser.