Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Gov. DeSantis says Bahamians are welcome in Florida if they have the proper documentation and a place to stay.
Gov. Ron DeSantis says he welcomes Bahamians to Florida, as long as they have passports, visas and a place to stay.
There are no shelters open in the state for those displaced by Hurricane Dorian, and the migration of Bahamians should be a federal concern — not Florida’s, the governor said.
For those who are flying from the Bahamas to Florida and have family or friends to stay with, “that’s no harm for us,” DeSantis said Tuesday.
The implication was that Bahamians should seek aid elsewhere if they don’t meet the requirements for admittance to the U.S. — a position expressed by President Donald Trump and echoed by DeSantis.
“If you’re somebody who needs assistance and you don’t have a place to stay [in Florida] … the Bahamian government would probably prefer folks use some of the resources that are there,” DeSantis said.
The governor’s comments Tuesday came as a debate grows about how Florida and the U.S. government should treat Bahamian refugees.
Florida lawmakers have urged President Trump to waive some visa requirements to help expedite evacuation efforts. DeSantis has avoided taking a position on the issue.
“I’m not going to weigh in on that, no,” he said Monday. “They’ve got to figure out how they’re going to do the immigration stuff. I can tell you the president and the Bahamian government — none of them want to try to facilitate a big migration. They believe that it should be something that should be dealt with in the Bahamas, and I think that that makes sense as well.”
The Trump administration’s policy is not to facilitate any special migration to the U.S., DeSantis said.
The Department of Homeland Security recently released guidelines saying Bahamians traveling to the U.S. must have a valid passport or a Bahamian Travel Document listing nationality as Bahamian. For Bahamians arriving to the U.S. by ship, they must have a valid passport and a travel visa.
Florida has helped raise about $3 million in donations from business and individuals for those in the Bahamas, and a total of $11 million in resources is going to the islands from the state, he said.
One example: Florida Power & Light Co. is partnering with the state to send 500,000 bottles of water, a total of 19 trucks full.
FPL has no plans to send utility workers, as it did in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria.
“This is going to be a rebuilding effort that takes time. Our focus now is on the essentials, what Bahamians need — food and water,” said Eric Silagy, the utility’s CEO.
DeSantis said the federal government has put more manpower into the visa office for affected Bahamians looking to come to the U.S.
If some Florida counties incur costs for humanitarian relief, “I think the federal government should be responsible for those costs,” DeSantis said.
Trump has dismissed bipartisan calls from Florida lawmakers to ease entry requirements for people fleeing Hurricane Dorian’s devastation in the Bahamas, saying “totally proper documentation” is needed to ensure “very bad people” don’t exploit the disaster.
Confusion has flourished over documentation requirements, with dozens of people in Freeport being ordered off a ferry bound for Fort Lauderdale on Sunday night because they didn’t have visas.
Trump told reporters Monday that the federal government needs to be “very careful” because some people in the Bahamas aren’t in the island nation legally and could be dangerous.
“I don’t want to allow people that weren’t supposed to be in the Bahamas to come into the United States, including some very bad people and some very bad gang members and some very, very bad drug dealers,” he said. “We are going to be very, very strong on that.”
Nearly 1,500 Hurricane Dorian survivors arrived at the Port of Palm Beach aboard a cruise ship on Saturday and were processed without incident, customs officials said.