Biden must keep his promise: Save DACA, grant TPS to Venezuelans and share the American Dream | Opinion

The Rosenfeld family came to Florida fleeing the relentless anti-Semitism and political violence of their country, Venezuela. They believed they would find tranquility and certainty in the United States. However, after tragically losing their mother in 2009, the children found themselves victims of a broken immigration system that the Trump administration dismantled further and weaponized with anti-immigrant policies.

Voters from all across America repudiated Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda and xenophobia. President Trump made his assault on the immigration system and immigrant families a signature issue for his presidency, and the public voted him out.

Now President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris must follow through on their promises: reinstating DACA, pushing an immigration bill with a pathway to citizenship in the first 100 days of their administration and granting Temporary Protected Status for Venezuelans. They and the GOP should come together in a bipartisan manner to do right by these hardworking immigrants. After all, these are solutions that over 70 percent of Americans support.

Elias Rosenfeld, a beneficiary of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and an immigration activist, deserves nothing less. There are more than 200,000 Venezuelans in the country who would benefit from Temporary Protected Status if the Biden administration grants it. They don’t have the option of going back to the failed state of Venezuela under Nicolás Maduro.

The Trump administration not only rebuffed several calls to grant Venezuelans TPS, but fought in court to take it away from other groups such as Nicaraguans, Salvadorans and Haitians. This same administration that denied documented status to those eligible for TPS came to South Florida asking for their support in the 2020 election. That was not what the Rosenfelds deserved from the country where they sought refuge, especially after all the family had gone through in Venezuela.

There, the weekly routine of going to temple became an ordeal under the Chávez regime; anti-Semitic epithets came raining down on congregation members on their way to service, often accompanied by stones. Stories of kidnappings after Shabbat started circulating among Caracas’s close-knit Jewish community. For Elias and his family, it got incredibly real when street criminals kidnapped one of his aunts. He was about 4.

Elias’ mother, a tech executive, decided she could not raise her two children in those conditions. In 2006, she obtained a work visa and moved to South Florida. When his mother died of kidney cancer in 2009, 11-year old Elias and his sister were motherless and in legal limbo — though they did not know it at the time.. Elias discovered he didn’t have legal status when he applied for a driver’s license four years later.

He emerged from the shadows in 2012 when the Obama administration implemented DACA. However, tens of thousands of Elias’ fellow Venezuelans have not been as fortunate, either because they are too young or too old to qualify for the program.

TPS would be the most immediate solution for Venezuelans. However, Senate Republicans keep shutting the door instead of standing up for them. Republican senators have blocked bills aimed at providing Venezuelans with TPS at least three times. Ironically, one of those votes took place on Sept. 16, just as the United Nations declared that Venezuela’s regime was violating human rights and committing crimes against humanity.

This must change. Our elected officials must come together for the sake of our community.

Elias is doing his part. As a fellow at FWD.us, an organization advocating for immigration reform with a pathway to citizenship for the undocumented, he frequently traveled to Washington, D.C. to advocate for DACA and TPS.

With Biden in the White House, the question for Republicans will be how they plan to respond when it comes time to legislate. Will those in the Senate continue Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda and slam the door on the American Dream, or will they work in a bipartisan fashion to pass policies that Americans support overwhelmingly?

For the Biden-Harris administration, this is a mandate to implement TPS protections for Venezuelans and provide a pathway to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants.

The families of leaders such as Elias, who used their stories to organize and advocate in our nation’s capital, deserve nothing less from the new president and new Congress.

Al Cardenas, former chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, is co-chair of the American Business Immigration Coalition.

This story was originally published December 22, 2020 at 12:58 PM.