Cuban Americans, mostly settled in South Florida, will support candidate Donald Trump in the elections like never before, but they are against the Republican eliminating the parole humanitarian that has allowed the legal entry into the United States of more than 111,000 citizens of the island. It is contradictory, but the figures reaffirm it: although the red fervor in the Sunshine State is increasingly growing, the majority does not intend to end the Biden administration’s program that included Cubans since the beginning of 2023, but that It already benefited Venezuelans, Haitians and Nicaraguans with a two-year legal stay in the country.
Trump has publicly promised that, if he becomes the 47th president of the United States, he will confront the immigration crisis and, specifically, he will attack two programs that have allowed the legal entry of thousands of immigrants: the CBP One mobile application, through which asylum applications are made from Mexico, and the parole humanitarian, which until September 2024 has benefited 531,000 citizens of the four nationalities. “I would recall them and expel them,” the former president said unreservedly in a phone interview with FOX News. “Prepare to leave, especially quickly if you are criminals. “They are going to come out very quickly.”
Cubans, however, seem to ignore these and other constant Republican threats to carry out the massive, million-dollar deportation of emigrants or to cleanse the country of “criminals” who cross the border. The survey by Florida International University (FIU), which has been carried out in the community for more than 30 years, ensures that 55% of Cuban-American voters identify as Republican, and that 68% will give their vote to Trump . Analysts maintain that Trump is much stronger among Cuban Americans now than in the 2016 elections, and that this is the highest approval figure for the Republican candidate, that is, double what he received in 2016, when he was elected. of 35%.
One of the questions in the survey was specifically aimed at finding out whether the support program was supported or not. parole Biden’s humanitarian program, and the results revealed that a considerable 72% of participants were in favor of the program, and that 62% of Cuban-American Republicans do not want it to be dismantled.
Cubans do not feel addressed by Trump
According to Jorge Duany, director of the Cuban Research Institute and professor of Anthropology in the Department of Global and Sociocultural Studies at the University of Florida, the majority of Cuban Americans do not feel addressed when Trump makes these types of anti-immigrant statements or even threatens to erase from the map a program that benefits them and their families on the island. “The majority of Cubans, at least in the first generations, feel like exiles more than immigrants, and that somehow means that Trump’s speech does not seem to allude to them, but, in fact, it does,” he says. the researcher.
The Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966 guarantees that citizens are less afraid than the rest of the emigrants when the Republican makes these statements, or when the Biden Administration announces that the parole It will not last more than two years. A few weeks ago, when everyone was wondering what was going to happen to the first Venezuelans who arrived in the United States under the protection of a sponsor, the authorities confirmed that there was no extension, although they will continue to receive new applications. In the case of Cubans, it is enough for them to stay legally for a period of one year and one day to benefit from the Adjustment Law and first apply for permanent residence, in order to access US citizenship in five years.
So far everything is becoming very confusing and it is unknown what will happen to the migrants who benefit from the parole that, after two years, they cannot regularize their status, even more so when many of their governments do not allow deportation flights. Those arriving from Haiti or Venezuela may possibly opt for Temporary Protected Status (TPS). Nicaraguans, however, would only have to process an asylum application. Only with him parole To date, almost 214,000 Haitians, more than 96,000 Nicaraguans and almost 121,000 Venezuelans have benefited.
Since the Biden Administration launched the program in October 2022 as one of its strategies to alleviate the crisis at the border – which has been a fundamental issue in this presidential campaign – the decrease in numbers speaks of expected results. The Office of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) assured that since these legal entry processes into the country were implemented, encounters at the border have decreased by 99%.
He parole humanitarian has been exposed to all kinds of criticism and more than one threat of elimination. Some 21 Republican states sued the federal government over a program that they say forces them to invest millions in health care, education and public safety for immigrants. It was also flagged and even temporarily paused when the authorities detected that the sponsors were committing fraud in the processes.
