NEW YORK, CMC – An immigration advocacy group here has expressed “profound disappointment” with United States President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address on Tuesday night, saying that he did not go far enough to address issues surrounding Caribbean and other immigrants, migrants, and asylum seekers.
Co-executive director of the Brooklyn-based Make the Road New York (MRNY), Jose Lopez, told the Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC) that his group, which boasts over 25,000 members in the New York metropolitan area, was “extremely disappointed” by the Biden’s remarks on immigration.
“Instead of committing to bold action to protect immigrant communities, he celebrated anti-immigrant measures his administration has taken while copying and pasting his empty promises of the past,” Lopez said.
“In addition to redoubling real efforts to advance a path to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants, he must reverse course on efforts to criminalize our communities further and gut the asylum system—and instead invest in supporting asylum-seekers,” he added.
Ahead of Biden’s State of the Union address, immigrant New Yorkers had urged him to “act for immigrant communities.”
“Immigrants are an integral part of communities, our economy, and our country, but we are still waiting for President Biden to stand up and fight alongside us,” Yaritza Mendez, MRNY co-director, told CMC. “For years, we have fought tooth and nail for a pathway for citizenship—engaging legislators, battling in the courts, taking over the streets, and marching through the capital.
“We need President Biden to seize this opportunity and take action to refocus his administration on using every administrative tool available to improve the lives of immigrants across the nation and finally delivering a legislative solution centered on a path to citizenship—one that finally codifies into law the permanent protections that our immigrant communities deserve,” she added.
Mendez said instead of attempting to gut the asylum system, the president must reverse course and focus on providing justice and protection to those seeking asylum, safeguard their rights in the face of anti-immigrant policies in the south, invest in resettlement, and address the root causes of migration.
In his first State of the Union speech under a divided Congress, President Biden underscored his economic record and appealed to Republicans to work with him but said little, to the chagrin of immigration advocates, on immigration.
“And let’s also come together on immigration and make it a bipartisan issue once again,” said Biden to a joint session of the US Congress.
“We now have a record number of personnel working to secure the border, arresting 8,000 human smugglers, seizing over 23,000 pounds of fentanyl in just the last several months. We launched a new border plan the previous month.
“Unlawful migration from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela has come down 97 percent as a consequence. But American border problems won’t be fixed until Congress acts,” Biden warned.
“If we don’t pass my comprehensive immigration reform, at least pass my plan to provide the equipment and officers to secure the border. And a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers, those on temporary status, farm workers, essential workers.”
Dreamers are immigrants who came illegally to the United States as children with their parents.
Haitians are among the immigrants who have sought Temporary Protected Status (TPS) in the US.
Last weekend, the Organization of American States (OAS) said that it supported an initiative by the Missions of Chile and Colombia to the OAS, which, in collaboration with the Inter-American Dialogue, proposed to jointly and collaboratively initiate, within the OAS, a hemispheric dialogue that allows for coordination and cooperation for the protection of migrant and refugee children in the Americas, including the Caribbean.
The Inter-American Dialogue is a Washington-based think tank in the field of international affairs, primarily related to the Western Hemisphere, which aims to “foster democratic governance, prosperity, and social equity in Latin America and the Caribbean.”
The Dialogue’s research focuses on the rule of law, education, migration, remittances, energy, climate change, and extractive industries.
The OAS stated that the initiative is “safeguarding the rights of migrant and refugee children and adolescents, whether accompanied or unaccompanied.”
“Latin America and the Caribbean are experiencing one of the largest migratory processes in history. Violence, poverty, inequality, hunger, insecurity, political instability, and persecution, as well as the effects of climate change, force the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people each year, which poses challenges for policies and institutions of our countries,” it said.
Earlier, the Biden administration announced that it was limiting migrants from Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Haiti who enter the US to 30,0000 each month under humanitarian parole while expelling those who attempt to cross the southwestern border.
The New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC), an umbrella policy and advocacy organization representing over 200 immigrant and refugee rights groups throughout New York State, has also strongly denounced plans by the Biden administration to limit migrants from the Caribbean.
NYIC said these plans would “cruelly favor” asylum seekers with family connections and economic privilege, demanding additional protections for Caribbean and other asylum seekers.
The White House said in a statement that these measures would expand and expedite legal pathways for orderly migration from the Caribbean and other countries and result in new consequences for those who fail to use those legal pathways.
The White House also said that the new measures draw on the success of the Venezuela initiative, which was launched in October 2022, “and has resulted in a dramatic drop in the number of Venezuelan nationals attempting to enter the United States unlawfully”>
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