A ‘silent crisis’: Miami experts discuss recent migration in South Florida at Herald townhall

Despite skyrocketing costs of housing, rising inflation and the COVID-19 pandemic, South Florida continues living out its legacy as a longtime haven for people fleeing disaster, devastation and dictatorships, a group of immigration experts and community leaders said Thursday morning.

The group, a panel brought together by the Miami Herald and el Nuevo Herald, debated how back-to-back migrations in recent years from Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Haiti, as well as Afghanistan and Ukraine are shaping Miami and the region and the challenges that the recent arrivals are facing.

At the panel at Miami-Dade College’s downtown campus, discussion centered around the historical echoes in recent waves of migration, the affordable housing crisis’ impact on resettlement efforts, and the role of local social service organizations and county and federal governments in resettling migrants.

Multi award-winning journalist and CBS4 Anchor Eliott Rodriguez — the Bronx-born child of Cubans who came to the U.S. before the Cuban Revolution — moderated the lively discussion among the panelists, many of whom knew each other from on-the-ground immigration work.

Krystina François, who recently left her Miami-Dade County role to pursue a doctorate, pointed out how migrants coming to Miami faced a host of new challenges in their home countries, including Haiti’s 2010 earthquake that killed over 300,000 people according to the Haitian government, serious political instability in Cuba and elsewhere, and the devastation of COVID-19 in Latin America.

As more immigrants have come to the U.S. — federal authorities registered nearly 221,000 Cuban and 54,000 Haitian encounters at the southwest border last fiscal year — local organizations in South Florida that have historically been a migrant safety net have had to do more with fewer resources and staff than before, she said.

“While we were able to absorb our communities because of our vast diaspora that have been so welcoming and learned so many lessons over the last 50 years, it is a little tough, because we’re operating with our hands tied.”

But François, the former director of the Office of New Americans, a county resource that offers services to newly arrived immigrants, also said that South Florida could serve as a model for other jurisdictions across the United States.

Immigrants and their children spearhead many of the local governments, she added. She also described the county government as a facilitator that brings together groups that serve Miami’s immigrant communities.

“We have a unified message versus competing messages. We’re not trying to pit the various communities against each other but actually saying that there needs to be effective policy-making at the federal level and see where there can be local policy-making,” she said.

Reuben Rojas, Church World Service resettlement senior outreach specialist, echoed François. He said that the circumstances “in the last few years has been a perfect storm” as understaffed and under-resourced resettlement agencies in South Florida helped a domino line of migrant waves, ranging from Venezuelans and Cubans to Afghans and Ukrainians, amid the COVID-19 pandemic and a skyrocketing housing market.

Rojas called on the greater Miami community to get more involved as it had in the past to help welcome and resettle new arrivals coming into the city and region.

“A lot of people do reach out, but there’s also this tendency to say ‘No, if I did it, you can do it,” he said, “But the Miami that some people came in the ‘60s, ‘70s,’ 80s, even ‘90s and early 2000s is not the same Miami from the last 10-15 years.”

Following a question from a Miami Herald reporter, Rojas agreed that this attitude could be simultaneously related to how immigrant communities are both more assimilated in the United States following generations of living there and drained by the challenges in their ancestral homelands.

The Biden administration’s recently enacted parole program for Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela requires migrants to have a U.S.-based sponsor that is financially responsible for them. Many families and friends already in the U.S. cannot shoulder the burden, panelists said, dividing Miami’s Haitian and immigrant communities in recent weeks as they decide whether to help their loved ones come through the program.

“Many of us arrive, and we’re stuck in survival mode,” Rojas said, “A lot of the families that are here are volunteering, working two or three jobs to take care of their families here and families back in their country. And now having to take families into their own home.”

The inflation and rising housing costs strangling South Florida residents are also part of the difficult challenges facing recently arrived migrants who are resettling. Johanna Cervone, Miami-Dade County chief of staff, singled out affordable housing as a principal issue for recently arrived migrants, many of whom wait a long time or don’t qualify for work permits — issues Levine Cava has highlighted to the Department of Homeland Security as she seeks collaboration and resources from the federal government.

Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski, who recounted the arrival of Cubans and Haitians by sea in the early 1980s as Miami grappled with the McDuffie riots and the differences in how the immigration system treated Cubans and Haitians, sees echoes of past migrations in the experiences of recent arrivals today.

The Spanish- and Creole-speaking clergyman, who spent nearly two decades ministering at the Notre Dame d’Haiti parish in Little Haiti, called the current wave a “quiet crisis.” He said that the issues migrants faced with housing were evident in communities near some Catholic parishes, where some homes have several cars parked in front of them, indicating that many families are living in them.

“That was the same reality that we knew in Little Haiti in the 1970s and 1980s. So you know, it’s deja vu all over again now,” he said.

Guerline Jozef, executive director of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, highlighted the racism and additional complications Black migrants face during their migration journeys and immigration processes. She also criticized the Biden parole program, saying that many would-be migrants were blocked from applying because they did not have passports or sponsors. She also blasted a proposed rule from the Biden administration that would make many migrants presumably ineligible for asylum in the United States, unless they have sought it elsewhere along the way.

“When we are telling them that they have to stop in Nicaragua to ask for asylum, when the people from Nicaragua are fleeing themselves. It doesn’t make sense,” she said.

Jozef also emphasized the importance of officials and service providers in the United States understanding the root causes of migration, and during the conversation pointed to American foreign policy as a driver of displacement and instability in several Latin American countries, including Haiti, that is fueling the arrival of people to the United States.

We are the first responders. We are receiving them, but they are coming to those communities. How we prepare to receive them is really critical, but at the end of the day, unless we address the root causes of forced migration… we will continue to have those waves,” she said.

The audience of about 30 people — which included Herald readers and reporters, immigration lawyers and advocates, and county officials — commented on the panel’s themes and asked questions afterwards.

When audience members questioned why this crisis in Miami was perhaps less visible in South Florida’s day-to-day life compared to historic migrations such as the Mariel Crisis in 1980, panelists said there could be many reasons, ranging from groups working discreetly to not rile anti-immigrant sentiment to residents used to seeing waves of migrants come time and time again to county services handling the influx despite service providers working with limited resources.

“Maybe that’s one of the reasons the crisis is so silent, because we’re not that overwhelmed,” Wenski mused.

This story was originally published February 23, 2023 at 6:00 PM.