Biden protects Venezuelans from deportation, but Florida leaders differ over permanent residency

Florida Democrats and Republicans celebrated the Biden administration’s decision to grant protected status to Venezuelan refugees.

But each side pointed at the other in assigning blame for why such protections were delayed during the Trump administration. And the question of whether enough Republicans will get on board in making those protections permanent remains in doubt.

“This is something that’s going to continue to hold Florida back and hold families back if they don’t find [permanent] solutions,” said U.S. Rep. Darren Soto, D-Kissimmee.

The Biden administration announced last month that more than 300,000 eligible Venezuelans who have sought Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, will be protected from deportation for 18 months.

“We’ve been working on this for six years since my time in the state Senate,” Soto said in an interview with the Orlando Sentinel. “There’s over 200,000 Venezuelans in the state of Florida by last count who would be affected by this one way or another. Many of them are mixed citizen/immigrant families. So it’s been a long time coming, and it’s going to keep a lot of families together here in Central Florida.”

The move comes years into the crisis in Venezuela, which has seen food shortages and an annual inflation rate of more than 1 million percent. As many as a third of Venezuelans in the once oil-rich nation were eating just one meal a day, according to a 2019 study.

Former President Trump attempted to make the crisis a Republican issue by saber-rattling and threatening the nation’s strongman leader Nicolas Maduro. But Trump deferred on protecting Venezuelans fleeing the country from deportation as part of a hard stance against refugees that included stripping TPS status from residents of several Caribbean and Central and South American countries.

Two years ago, a House bill sponsored by Soto granting TPS to Venezuelans failed in the Senate, leading Soto and other Democrats to blame Republicans for the bill dying.

U.S. Sen. Rick Scott and other Republicans, however, pointed to a bill backed by Scott that same year that would have protected Venezuelans but also completely overhauled the TPS system, requiring any protections to be reviewed by Congress every two years.

That bill was blocked by Democrats when he tried and failed to “fast-track” it through the Senate.

“Democrats in Congress don’t actually want to solve the immigration crisis or secure the border,” a Scott spokesman said. “They continue to put politics above human rights. The Democrats repeatedly blocked Senator Scott’s attempts to get TPS done for Venezuelans, which had the full support of Senate Republicans.”

Soto, however, said Scott’s bill was an unacceptable attempt to use the Venezuelan crisis to make it harder for other refugee groups to stay in the country.

“I talked to many folks in the Venezuelan community and they were heartbroken by that devil’s deal that [would] end TPS for everybody else, just to get it for themselves,” Soto said. “There wasn’t support in our local community for that. And they were disappointed that it was used as an attempt to hurt the TPS program for other communities in Central America, communities with strong ties to our Venezuelan community here.”

But Soto did credit Republican U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio for his support of Venezuelan TPS, including sponsoring the companion bill to Soto’s House bill in the Senate.

“So there is a bipartisan effort,” Soto said. “And now Sen. Scott’s got a second chance.”

Soto said Scott should throw his support to the Dream and Promise Act and with the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, two bills that passed the House with some Republican support, “and maybe we can work a compromise.”

The Democratic bills would create a path to permanent residency for Venezuelans and other protected groups.

Asked about whether he would support permanent residency Rubio’s office referred to his remarks following Biden’s announcement, in which Rubio stressed the temporary nature of the protections.

“I have long advocated providing much-needed relief to help eligible Venezuelan nationals residing in the U.S. with a work permit and a temporary solution, which is exactly what the Trump Administration did earlier this year.”

He was referring to Trump granting Venezuelans Deferred Enforced Departure protections on his final day of office in January. That prevented deportations for 18 months but was easier to revoke.

Rubio added, “It’s critical that we continue working with our Democratic allies to secure a Venezuela free from tyranny and ensure this temporary status in the U.S. does not become a permanent one.”

The Secure Act, which is the Senate version of the permanent residency bill, still doesn’t have a Republican co-sponsor and needs 10 Republicans to sign on in order to avoid a filibuster.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Maryland, praised Rubio and Scott for supporting TPS for Venezuelans, but added, “Now the question is, where we go from here.”

“What we experienced in the previous administration was when you don’t provide certainty you create a lot of instability,” Van Hollen said in a recent conference call with the American Business Immigration Coalition Florida. “... For four years we were dependent on the courts to prevent people who lived here for decades as TPS recipients from being deported.”

“We really do need to make sure this is a bipartisan bill,” he added. “We hope [Rubio and Scott] will join us in this effort.”

The issue was seen as a way for Republicans to pry away Venezuelan American votes in Florida from Democrats, replicating the successful anti-socialism message that has worked to pull Cuban Americans to the right for the past 60 years.

And it seemed to have worked, with Venezuelan voters shifting to Republicans in South Florida and elsewhere in 2020 thanks in part to social media messaging.

“That was a tragedy because the Venezuelan immigrants were split,” said William Diaz, founder of Casa Venezuela in Orlando. “And there are people that are still enemies, because of that, during this past election campaign.”

But Samuel Vilchez Santiago, a Venezuelan American activist from Orlando and former Democratic state House candidate, said Biden’s TPS move will help move Venezuelans back to the Democratic fold.

“The Trump administration had the power to pass TPS for four years [but] just left us basically with a DED [order] that didn’t have any form of instructions on how that was going to be implemented on his last day of office,” Vilchez Santiago said. “So it creates a very clear contrast as to who’s paying attention to the Venezuelan community and who’s not.”

slemongello@orlandosentinel.com; icotto@orlandosentinel.com