Eduardo Garcia, a migrant from Venezuela, stands with crutches alongside relatives outside...

Eduardo Garcia, a migrant from Venezuela, stands with crutches alongside relatives outside the Catholic Charities headquarters in New York City, Aug. 16. Credit: AP/Robert Bumsted

Suddenly, New Yorkers who pay attention have Venezuela on their minds.

Over the weekend, rain flooded a parking lot near Orchard Beach in the Bronx, where Mayor Eric Adams had planned a tent city for up to 1,000 migrants to stay short term. The site was shifted to Randall’s Island.

City shelters are full. Significantly, thousands of the asylum-seekers among them come from Venezuela — where dictators of left-wing pedigree mismanaged a once-prosperous oil-exporting nation into economic collapse, so far lasting a decade. People take long and risky routes to flee.

The outflow of people has been intense for years, and the regime of Nicolás Maduro remains a thorn for the U.S. To secure freedom for seven Americans detained in Venezuela, President Joe Biden last week saw fit to release two Venezuelan nationals imprisoned for conspiring to smuggle cocaine here. Both just happen to be nephews of Venezuelan first lady Cilia Flores.

The governors of Texas and Florida made a point of sending groups of migrants north, ostensibly so northern liberals share the burden of resettling them. The selection of who was to go where, of course, sounds cynically calculated, whether the destination was Massachusetts, or New York, or Biden’s home state of Delaware. When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis recently arranged for migrant flights to Martha’s Vineyard, the group noticeably included mostly Venezuelans and a few Colombians.

Cubans, too, have been arriving en masse to Florida after Nicaragua lifted a visa requirement — opening a path through Central America. But they weren't the governor's pawns in this stunt. Cuban Americans have long been an important and influential part of Florida’s local political landscape.

Michael Bustamante, a professor of history and Cuban American studies, told The Washington Post: “We are seeing more people say, ‘We need to step up the pressure and close the door,’ even if it’s the very same door that me and my parents walked through.”

But Venezuelan immigrants also belong to the mosaic in Florida, with at least 200,000 of them in the state by one estimate. Just as surely Haitian Americans, also part of the social and political scene in south Florida, are seeing a spike of others from the troubled country of their origins risking everything to reach U.S. shores by boat.

On Venezuela, the Trump administration had zero success, diplomatic or otherwise, after making a big show of concern. Despite the administration's bombastic proclamations of support for opposition leader Juan Guaidó, Maduro maintained power and remains allied with Russia and China. On the immigration front, those fleeing the dictatorship were caught up in the same delayed processing times that persist today.

For Adams and other mainstream New York leaders who favor sanctuary over expulsion, the Venezuelan refugee crisis becomes a challenge of accommodation. For Biden and the Congress, it’s a matter of border control and struggling with an immigration system in long need of overhaul. For DeSantis and GOP Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, it’s a matter of getting Democrats in the frame for blame.

The motivation for those who take a chance on coming from Venezuela might not be terribly different for those from Guatemala, or Ukraine, or Mexico, or Cuba, El Salvador, Haiti, Syria, or anywhere else. But in the fleeting circumstances of the moment, in today's news, Venezuela, a battered nation of 28 million, becomes especially emblematic.

Columnist Dan Janison's opinions are his own.

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