Did The Biden Administration Go Full Trump On Refugees?
On 7/13/2021, Alejandro Mayorkas, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said refugees fleeing from either Haiti or Cuba would not be allowed to enter the United States. Both nations are suffering a massive political crisis and both are in a state of massive instability, Haiti as a result of their President being assassinated and Cuba as a result of massive anti-government protests taking place across the country, meaning many citizens of these countries would fit the needed qualifications to become refugees, but Mayorkas, and by proxy, the Biden Administration, is ignoring the pleas of these people.
Specifically, Mayorkas said the following:
DHS is working with our partners to support the Haitian and Cuban people. The Coast Guard along with our state, local, and federal partners are monitoring any activity that may indicate increases in unsafe and irregular maritime migration in the Florida straits, including unpermitted vessel departures from Florida to Cuba. The time is never right to attempt migration by sea. To those who risk their lives doing so, this risk is not worth taking. Allow me to be clear, if you take to the sea you will not come to the United States.
It should be noted that if Mayorkas’s rules were applied previously, Mayorkas would not be in the United States right now. Mayorkas was born in Havan, Cuba, and came to the United States — along with his parents — shortly after the Cuban Revolution. It seems Mayorkas is entering the same league as Peter Brimlow, Hans Hermann Hoppe, Stefan Molyneux, and Peter Sweden as immigrants who are oddly opposed to immigration. (And with friends like those, who needs enemies?)
As for the idea that “the time is never right to attempt migration by sea,” that’s just ridiculous to anyone who knows a thing or two about United States history. Has the secretary of Homeland Security never heard of the Cuban and Haitian boat people? How about the Wet feet, dry feet policy that was federal law from 1995 until 2014? How about the arrival of thousands of Cuban immigrants in Flordia all throughout the early 1960s, especially after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion and Cuban Missle Crisis? How about when the United States allowed the arrival of roughly 100,000 refugees from Haiti between 1972 and 1981?
I’m sorry, I can’t get over this: A man who is only in the United States because we have been so accepting of Cuban refugees is now stopping the United States from accepting more Cuban refugees. Should his ass be sent back to Cuba considering he’s now disparaging people who came here the same way he did?
For the record, here’s what President Biden said about the recent protests in Cuba on 7/12/2021 — one day before his administration announced it would not be accepting any refugees:
We stand with the Cuban people and their clarion call for freedom and relief from the tragic grip of the pandemic and from the decades of repression and economic suffering to which they have been subjected by Cuba’s authoritarian regime.
Both Biden and Mayorkas claim to stand with the protesters, but not enough to actually allow them to enter the United States. Instead, Biden is giving them nothing more than a pat on the back for protesting — while hoping that maybe, just maybe, an authoritarian regime like Cuba will be nice and listen to political dissidents, in spite of that never happening at any point in their history. (The Press Freedom Index, created by the non-profit group Reporters Without Borders, regularly ranks Cuba as one of the least press-free countries in the world.)
Here’s the simple fact: The people of this country voted Joe Biden for President specifically in hopes he would, among other things, fix the broken immigration system the United States has. Among the most broken aspects of it is the current refugee system, which makes it nearly impossible for refugees to actually be granted asylum in the United States. Now, less than six months into his administration, Joe Biden has directly said he’s going to refuse to allow asylum seekers from a country in political chaos to come to the United States. That is directly out of the Donald Trump playbook, and anyone who voted for this administration should feel nothing less than a sense of betrayal.
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