To my Venezuelan brothers and sisters: Let’s not stigmatize our fellow migrants
In recent days, I have thought a lot about my grandparents, my Oma and my Opa, and about Venezuela. I have thought, especially about the Venezuelans who welcomed them with warmth and love when they fled the Nazis’ atrocities that decimated their Jewish families and their people.
I was born and raised in that country that allowed my grandparents’ generation, my mother’s and mine to flourish. A country where we were all equal as Venezuelans, regardless of our background, creed, skin color or socioeconomic standing — in short, a Venezuela no one wanted to leave.
But that has given way to a catastrophe of injustice and political upheaval that we all have endured.
First, the regime of Hugo Chavez and then Nicolás Maduro derailed the lives of 6.8 million Venezuelans who left with their homeland nestled in their hearts.
And Venezuelans are still making their way into exile in the United States.
Last week, in San Antonio, Venezuelans who had received legal immigration papers were deceived with false promises by Gov. Ron DeSantis and his operatives and flown to Massachusetts, where they were dumped in a wealthy community, Martha’s Vineyard, that not expecting them. People already in dire straits were thrown into a horrible situation.
REJECTING OUR OWN
But I see something else that’s troubling: Some Venezuelans in Miami are turning their backs on these new immigrants, on fellow Venezuelans.
Venezuelan expatriates who started new lives in new lands — regardless of how or when — are inextricably connected by two circumstances: the immigrant and minority experiences.
The fact that some Venezuelans in South Florida seem to have forgotten this crucial truth is painful.
This dramatic human flood is the largest wave of external displacement in the world today and, along with Ukraine, the largest refugee and migrant crisis, according to intergovernmental organizations.
The polarization in Miami’s Venezuelan community has led a segment to stigmatize all Venezuelan migrants as “undocumented immigrants” or “criminals that we do not want in the United
States.”
This double standard by older immigrants against newer ones incites hatred and resentment — two feelings that chavismo in its early days knew how to exploit to destroy the fabric of the once-cohesive Venezuelan society.
Beyond the political convictions of each side, both of which deserve to be respected, these criticisms often ignore that the Venezuelan-exile community, like the Cubanexile community, has been formed in different layers, and by various diasporas.
I belong to the diaspora of those who left by plane and with a visa stamped on our passports. Although I am fortunate to now be a U.S. citizen, I understand that not all of us have the same luck or education to carve out a new future for ourselves, starting from scratch in many cases.
Today, thousands of those who flee Venezuela have walked or come by raft, each risk their lives — and those of their families — by hacking open a path in the jungle with machetes or crossing the sea aboard fragile boats.
I don’t like to make comparisons, because we all walk different paths and we are the result of particular circumstances, like those of my grandparents, who suffered an incomparable genocide.
OUTSIDE THE LAW
It’s worth remembering that any Venezuelan or foreign citizen who entered the United States with a tourist visa and stayed after it expired as an immigration solution has become an “unlawful presence” in this country, according to immigration laws.
And those who have filed asylum claims that authorities in both Republican and Democratic administrations have classified as “frivolous, fraudulent or non-meritorious” to obtain work authorization have also not obeyed the letter of the law.
Venezuelans in Florida should stop the double standards, and remember what the Christian gospel says: “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.”
Let us rescue our Venezuelan pride, our truthful identity, with its natural attributes of solidarity, understanding and empathy for our people. Let’s do it for our grandparents — and so that future generations will be like them.