Use every tool at our disposal to increase resources for our border communities and provide significant relief to Arizonans suffering from the consequences of. When the Republican governors of Texas and Arizona began busing immigrants out of their states last year, they said it was in protest of Democrats' reckless federal immigration policies. Democrats criticized the tactic as dehumanizing, especially when migrants were deceived about where they were going. However, some Democratic-led cities and states later became enthusiastic about the practice, most recently, Arizona's new governor, Katie Hobbs.
This is how the policy of transporting migrants has evolved. People have always traveled within the U.S. UU. Once they apply for asylum at the border.
In the border city of Del Rio, Texas, for example, the Val Verde Humanitarian Border Coalition, a nonprofit organization, receives immigrants directly from the U.S. From there, they only have a few options to reach their final destinations. A couple of Greyhound buses leave from Del Rio every day. The local airport lost service recently after American Airlines withdrew.
The nonprofit organization also works directly with a private transportation company. VVHBC usually helped newcomers determine where they needed to go, and then a family member would buy them a ticket. Some bus passengers also appreciate the free ride. Selina, who wants to meet her brother-in-law in New Jersey, tells NPR in Spanish that when she arrived in the United States, a guard told her about the free buses and showed her where to stand in line for one.
Otherwise, he wouldn't be able to pay, he says. That reality has helped to change immigrant transportation policy. Something that seemed like punishment for immigrants, done for political purposes, suddenly turned upside down because migrants are rational people, says Muzaffar Chishti, principal investigator at the Institute for Migration Policy. Not only could they get free admission to a family or to a shelter, but they found that these cities were actually very welcoming to immigrants, Chishti says.
Government agencies and nonprofit organizations in Philadelphia, Washington, DC. In many cases, they provide food, shelter, legal services, and help with transportation. In Philadelphia and DC, DC. Chicago officials didn't provide enough data to make the comparison.
In New York, where there is a law on the right to housing, more than 26,000 asylum seekers are staying in city-run shelters as of January 1. Democratic-led cities and states began transporting immigrants by bus last year, with some adjustments. In El Paso, the Democratic administration transported more than 13,000 people by bus through the fall, in some cases surpassing buses in the state of Texas. At the time, Mayor Oscar Leeser said he was coordinating with officials in receiving cities, unlike the governor.
However, the city suspended its own bus program in October, and the only government-backed bus program that exists now is managed by the state of Texas, according to a city spokesperson. Then, in December, thousands of people started showing up in Denver on their own. The city installed emergency shelters as outdoor temperatures dropped. However, it also bought individual bus tickets for 1,900 people, helping them reach 35 states, according to data provided by local officials.
Colorado Democratic Governor Jared Polis announced in early January that the state would also rent buses from Denver to other cities. But just a few days later, he suspended that program, after being asked by the mayors of Chicago and New York to leave it. In a statement, Polis blamed another party. The federal government and Congress have unfortunately failed the American people on immigration reform and border security, he said, while urging the Biden Administration and Congress to set aside funds for states that help migrants.
Chishti says the controversy over bus transportation is a wake-up call for politicians and hopes it will encourage a more coordinated, federally backed system to help migrants move around the country. That could include bus freight or other forms of transportation. While there's no timeline for its launch, it's a priority, Hebert says. The media play an enormous role in this process, often reproducing the false dichotomy between “legal” immigrants and illegal immigrants (or deserving and unworthy) immigrants (Villegas and Villegas, 201), thus consolidating “social illegality” (Flores and Schachter, 201) or the social construction of illegality (De Genova, 200).
The dashed lines represent important anti-immigrant laws passed in Arizona during the study period. In line with the “dog whistle politics” (López, 201) and “colorblind racism” (Bonilla-Silva, 201), anti-immigrant bias persists in the media regardless of semantics. While there are similar social and structural elements found in Arizona elsewhere, they may not have been harnessed (especially with the support of the media) to the same extent. In a way, readers' response to The Arizona Republic's use of the term “undocumented” is disconcerting, considering that the reports and editorials that used the term were still generally negative.
Therefore, they have a big voice in deciding who we can return and whom we should welcome and allow to enter the United States to process their cases in an immigration court. The change in terminology also corresponds to an absolute increase in the number of immigration-related items. Therefore, there are other cities in the country that receive them at the end of their trip while they wait for their decision in the immigration court. The readers' insistence that The Arizona Republic use the “most accurate adjective” of illegal suggests that, in their view, “undocumented” has become politicized, while “illegal” has become a depoliticized term.
In fact, a columnist for The Arizona Republic, David Howell, observed in his April 5, 2003 column that “now you know how to find out how many people read these columns. Therefore, by apparently accommodating the demands of their readers, the media encouraged the production of social illegality and helped create an increasingly hostile climate for immigrants in Arizona. Washington, DC service providers estimated in early September that about 85 percent of migrants were quickly heading elsewhere, while data collected by Arizona in early August showed that 20 percent of those sent to Washington, DC were eventually going to New Jersey, 20 percent to Florida and 7 percent to New York State. In addition, the Arizona media consistently overestimate the population of undocumented immigrants (McConnell, 201), especially by exaggerating the wording around the numbers (McConnell 201).
Catholic Charities of New York City, for example, between mid-July and mid-August received 300 notices to appear in immigration court by newcomers to the border with whom they had no previous relationship, because their address was on migrants' documents. .
