The new arrivals were tired after a long trip when they reached their destination in coastal Massachusetts. Yet they were hopeful, because they had been promised work and housing for them and their families.
Their hope soon turned to despair. The people who had arranged their travel and sent them on a one-way journey north had lied. There were no jobs and no homes. No one knew they were coming.
This wasn’t last week. It happened 60 years ago, in what were billed by their segregationist sponsors as Reverse Freedom Rides. Outraged by the civil rights movement, and Freedom Riders who campaigned to enforce Supreme Court rulings across the South, white citizens’ councils conned Black southerners into boarding Greyhound buses with false promises of better lives.
They thought their plans were shrewd. They wanted to strike back at Northern liberals for interfering in their states, and expose their hypocrisy by depositing poor Blacks to live alongside them. “See how they like it,” was their mindset. Ridding their states of some Black citizens was a bonus. They didn’t consider Black Americans to be people, much less their equals. The white supremacists treated them as disposable pawns in a larger political fight.
In a cynical echo of those racist tactics, Florida Governor and wannabe mini-Trump Ron DeSantis flew 50 immigrants on two chartered jets last Wednesday to Martha’s Vineyard, a small island off the Massachusetts coast. The Vineyard is a popular summer vacation getaway for affluent New Englanders. The migrants were lured from San Antonio, Texas, with promises of work and housing. These were lies straight out of the Jim Crow manual.
DeSantis didn’t tell anyone in Martha’s Vineyard or Massachusetts that the migrants were coming, not even his fellow Republican state Governor Charlie Baker. That would have defeated the point of his stunt. Chaos and cruelty were his goals. However, he did notify Fox News of his plans so that its reporters could capture the scenes when the immigrants landed. He wanted friendly headlines. To make sure no footage was missed, DeSantis also hired a videographer to travel with the group.
Note that he had to go the extra thousand miles to traffic his victims. That’s how far San Antonio is from Orlando, Florida, where the jets made a brief stop before turning north. Presumably this was a ruse to comply with Florida law, since DeSantis was spending Florida taxes to ship people from Texas to Massachusetts.
Why would he do this? If it seems a strange decision, you need to think like a Republican politician.
For months Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a DeSantis rival for post-Trump MAGA affections, has spent $14 million bussing migrants to Washington, DC, New York City and other towns, just like his Southern forebears. Lately he has taken to depositing immigrants at the Naval Observatory, Vice-President Kamala Harris’ official residence in the US capital.
He thinks this is a clever burn, since President Joe Biden has given Harris the job of addressing immigration issues at the border with Mexico. What it actually reveals is the thinly veiled racism and misogyny at the heart of Republicans’ tactics: for them Harris is the new bullseye for the vitriol they once heaped on Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. She is their ideal target.
Not to be outdone, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey has also played along. Now we have three stooges scraping the bottom of the barrel as they vie to become Trump’s heirs. Their antics won’t solve anything, but who needs joined-up policy when you can have cheap sound bites?
Immigration is a perfect example of people wanting simple solutions to complex problems; 70% of Americans believe immigration is good for the country. Yet “illegal immigration” is regarded with significant hostility. Credulous journalists don’t help. They parrot talking points about “border invasion” and an “immigration crisis” without checking and reporting the details.
For instance, few Americans would know that undocumented immigrants comprise only 3% of the population, and that they pay more in taxes than they receive in government expenditure on education or healthcare. Most Americans assume they are a net drain on government budgets, and that they claim welfare benefits funded by US citizens. Undocumented immigrants are not eligible for welfare, so this is a myth.
Americans don’t stop to consider the work these people do, and the essential role they play in the US economy. The agricultural industry would collapse without their labour. The construction and hospitality sectors would also struggle. The dirty truth is that most Americans refuse to do the jobs that migrants fill.
They also don’t ponder the cause and effect that drives people to leave their homes for a foreign land. People don’t uproot their families and risk everything to “take our jobs”. Poverty is a driver, but so is violence and corruption.
The political and security instability that permeates Latin America is driven in large part by the flow of drugs and guns in a ceaseless cycle between the US and its neighbours. It’s also compounded by almost two centuries of US political and corporate exploitation that weakened civil society and stifled economic development throughout the region. Without a true accounting of and reckoning with these factors, little will change.
Don’t hold your breath. Instead Republicans revert to immigration panic as surely as right-wingers do in Australia. Racial hostility and white fright have long been reliable vote winners. In the past it was the Irish and the Catholics. Then the Chinese. Later the Italians and the Vietnamese. Each generation surfaces new scapegoats to vilify.
The last time Congress passed meaningful immigration reform was in 1986 during Ronald Reagan’s presidency. In 2007, Republican senators defied their party’s president George W Bush to block his comprehensive proposal. In 2013, House Republicans stymied a bipartisan bill that had cleared the Senate. They don’t want a solution. They prefer to whine so they can mine the resentment.
The Reverse Freedom Rides petered out after a few months. The Southern racists underestimated the decency of their Northern counterparts. Judging by the reaction of the Martha’s Vineyard community this past week, it seems likely that these latest human trafficking efforts will fade away just as fast. But Republican politicking at immigrants’ expense looks set to linger.
Are you disturbed by the tactics of DeSantis and his fellow Republicans? What do you think they reveal about the attitude of the American right to immigration in general? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
