A Promising New Life
This past week, two Republican governors from the South used multiple immigrants in order to participate in a “political stunt.” They loaded the immigrants onto multiple forms of transportation and shipped them to the North.
Last Wednesday, around 50 immigrants arrived by plane in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. Their flights were paid for by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. A spokesperson for DeSantis sent a statement to many news outlets stating, “States like Massachusetts, New York, and California will better facilitate the care of these individuals who they have invited into our country by incentivizing illegal immigration.” Tricking and using these individuals purely for a political stunt seems incredibly inappropriate and unfair. These people are still humans and their lives should not be played with.
The immigrants who were on the flight to Martha’s Vineyard claim that they were told they were flying to Boston, Massachusetts, rather than Martha’s Vineyard.
This situation has since raised many questions on how immigrants should be treated and laws that should be created in order to protect them.
Martha’s Vineyard Rep. Dylan Fernandes said, "We have the governor of Florida ... hatching a secret plot to send immigrant families like cattle on an airplane.”
The immigrants who were transported to Martha’s Vineyard are Venezuelans who crossed the southwest border without authorization and turned themselves in to border officials.
The immigrants who were dropped at Vice President Kamala Harris’s home were from Colombia, Cuba, Guyana, Nicaragua and Panama and came into the country in the same manner as the others. Many of the immigrants planned to claim asylum, declaring that they face violence or persecution in their home countries and are afraid to return. Under American law, any immigrant has the right to do so, starting a process in which federal officials determine whether the claim is valid and they can obtain authorization to reside legally in the United States.
This process faces a years-long backlog. This means that these immigrants are living in a state of immigration limbo. If clear evidence is identified that the immigrants were lied to by state officials about where they were going, the immigrants could pursue suits for fraud or severe emotional distress.