Trump's end of immigration program puts Cuban American GOP politicians in a tough spot
The Trump administration’s decision to revoke temporary legal status for thousands of Cuban immigrants is putting Cuban American Republicans in a tough spot.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — The Trump administration’s decision last week to revoke temporary legal status for thousands of Cuban immigrants is putting Cuban American Republicans, most of whom vocally support the president, in the difficult political position of either backing an end to a popular program in their community — or disagreeing with Trump.
President Joe Biden started the so-called humanitarian parole process for Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan and Venezuelan migrants. It created a framework used by more than 500,000 people from those countries to stay in the U.S. for up to two years if they had a financial sponsor. Of the four migrant population groups covered, the biggest by far are Cubans.
Miami-Dade County is home to the largest populations of each migrant group in the country, including more than 1 million Cuban Americans. That group over the past few decades has amassed significant political clout within the Republican Party.
Guillermo Grenier, a Florida International University professor who helps lead the school’s Cuba Poll, the longest-running research project tracking the opinions of Cuban Americans in South Florida, said that when migrants come from Cuba they are not always familiar with the politics in the United States, but enter a Cuban American community that is overwhelmingly Republican-leaning.
“They say ‘I just know the Republican Party is the party of the Cubans,’” he added of new arrivals to the country.
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