When a bus full of immigrants parked in downtown Los Angeles in mid-June, it caused a stir in the town: in a city with one of the largest immigrant populations in the country, this was the first group to arrive sponsored by the Texas Governor Greg Abbott.
This week the twelfth of these buses arrived in Los Angeles, part of the Texas governor’s mission to distribute the responsibility of caring for newly arrived migrants to Democratic politicians who have supported more hospitable national immigration policies.
Since last year, both Texas and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis have offered migrants free transportation from border towns to New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and several other cities. The people arriving aboard these buses have strained the resources of some cities, as they have overwhelmed shelters and assistance facilities.
“It is aberrant that an elected official in the United States uses human beings as pawns in his cheap political game,” Karen Bass, mayor of Los Angeles, said in June. referring to the bus transportation program.
However, the reality is that the number of migrants offered free transportation from Texas in the last year is only a fraction of those who typically move from the southern border to cities across the country, to places where there are jobs. , family contacts and networks of other immigrants from their native countries. And it has been like that for years.
According to demographers’ calculations, of the almost 11 million immigrants currently living without legal authorization in the country’s 50 states, the majority began their new life with a trip from a border city or an airport that, Generally, they paid with help from a family member, a support group or with their own savings, not with support from the governor of Texas.
What was Abbott’s plan?
Determined to highlight the large number of people who have crossed the border in recent years, which he blames on the Joe Biden administration’s immigration policies, Abbott designed a plan to reach out to migrants once they were processed by the border authorities and offer them free transportation on rented buses.
“I am going to take the border to President Biden,” he declared at a press conference after presenting his plan in April 2022.
The governor of Texas, Greg AbbottCredit…Christopher Lee for The New York Times
Many migrants have been grateful for the opportunity to travel for free, as they often have little money left after completing the months-long journey to the US-Mexico border.
Lever Alejos, a Venezuelan who arrived in Washington DC last July, said: “I feel lucky that the governor sent me by bus to Washington.” Alejos found work and started sending money and gifts to his young son who is in his country of origin. He recently bought a car.
Does everyone board the buses?
No. In fact, the migrants boarding Texas state-funded buses represent only a fraction of the thousands who arrive at the border each month. Some migrants are wary of accepting free transportation.
Since April 2022, the Texas busing program has sent about 34,740 migrants to other states; That’s enough people to populate a small city. But that’s an insignificant subset of the hundreds of thousands who crossed the border in that same period, and most of them probably also reached destinations outside of Texas.
New York alone has received more than 100,000 migrants in the last year, and only 13,100 of them were sent on buses rented by the state of Texas.
What’s more, many migrants cross the border every day in Arizona, California, New Mexico and even parts of Texas where there are no free bus services. After being released by border authorities, they often manage to travel on their own to their destinations in the United States.
Every year, thousands of migrants take Greyhound buses from Tucson, San Diego and San Antonio, and some take commercial flights, which they can board as long as they have identification. They pay for their own transportation, or have relatives or friends who are already in the country and buy the ticket for them. In some cases, charities or volunteers offer migrants money or airline mileage vouchers for their transportation.
So why are there suddenly such shortages of resources in some cities?
Some of the migrants who arrive aboard the free buses tend to have more needs than others. That reflects a change that has occurred in the last two years in the composition of migrants who cross the border. A large proportion of those riding Texas buses are Venezuelans fleeing economic adversity and political turmoil.
Unlike Mexicans and Central Americans who have migrated to the United States for decades, Venezuelans are unlikely to have friends and family to welcome them, as their migration is a recent phenomenon.
Without money or family, Venezuelans have overstretched the capacity of nonprofit organizations and volunteer groups since the spring of last year. Because they have no contacts in the United States, Venezuelans are also more likely to want to travel to a large city, like New York, where they hope to find employment and help.
Venezuelans make up the majority of migrants sleeping in New York shelters. They continue to arrive, although their numbers have decreased in recent months.
The large number of Haitians who have arrived recently has also overwhelmed some cities, as many of them also arrive with few resources of their own.
In particular, New York City and the state of Massachusetts have been overwhelmed by the influx of migrants because they have right to shelter laws that require them to serve people who request it, although in Massachusetts that only applies to families with children and pregnant women.
Why do some stay in shelters for months?
Most migrants who cross the border seek asylum in the United States, but cannot apply for work permits until about six months after filing protection petitions. The vast number of applications has also created a bureaucratic backlog.
Without a work permit, it is difficult to find employment. Some immigrants find jobs in the informal economy or receive cash payments for manual labor. But it still takes time for them to save enough money to rent a place to live, and landlords often ask for proof of income and other documents they don’t have.
What other type of help do migrants receive?
Families can receive food, medical care and other supports, depending on the state. Children, regardless of their immigration status, have the right to enroll in public schools throughout the country.
In New York alone, the cost of helping immigrants runs into the billions of dollars. The financial burden posed by the new arrivals has motivated authorities in New York, Illinois and Massachusetts to declare states of emergency, urging the federal government to provide resources.
Miriam Jordan covers the impact of migration on American society, culture, and economy from a grassroots perspective. Before joining the Times, she covered immigration at the Wall Street Journal and was a correspondent in Brazil, Israel, Hong Kong and India. More from Miriam Jordan
Edgar Sandoval is a reporter for the National section and writes about the people and places of South Texas. Before that he was a reporter for newspapers in Los Angeles, Pennsylvania and Florida. He is the author of The New Face of Small Town America. More from Edgar Sandoval
2023-09-09 09:02:16
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