C4 SATURDAY, MARCH 16, 2024 ELKO DAILY FREE PRESS 00 1 Venezuela, 2023 Berioskha Guevara has no words to describe her hap- piness living in the United States. After decades of fear as a political opponent in Venezuela and struggles to buy staples like milk and bread, the 53-year- old chemist feels she is dreaming. Guevara and her 86-year-old father came to the U.S. under the sponsorship of her brother, a pharmacist who left after Hugo Chavez took power in 1999. we are like in said Guevara, who arrived in July.
stop smiling, making plans, thanking God because without parole I would never have been able to live my dreams as I am living them More than 7.7 million Venezuelans the country over the past decade as it went into an economic tail- spin, prompting the Biden administration to offer parole to 30,000 people a month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela. Texas and 20 other states sued, saying the administra- tion created a new visa program without the formalities of legislation from but does not challenge large-scale parole for Afghans and Ukrai- nians. A judge has yet to rule after an August trial. Vietnam, 1975 The Vietnam War era produced an exodus from Southeast Asia that brought parole to about 340,000 people. Kim-Trang Dang was a 25-year-old law student working as teacher when she left Saigon with her then-husband, two siblings and other family mem- bers.
Her father and two sisters left days earlier. It was April 1975, just before the capital of South Vietnam fell to North Vietnamese communist forces. They drove in the middle of the night to a river port where a boat was waiting. There were bombs, and in the streets, but were told a U.S. military ship was going to pick them up at sea.
They went to Subic Bay, the Philippines, and then Guam before being transferred to a camp at Fort Chaf- fee, a military installation in western Arkansas where they stayed about a month waiting for a sponsor who could take them out to live in the U.S. The sponsor offered them his house in Tampa, Flor- ida. Kim-Trang got a job at a shrimp factory, where she spent eight hours a day pulling off shrimp skin and had English classes at night. She moved to San Diego in the 1980s and got a job as a social worker at a Catholic or- ganization, where she retired after 23 years. happy that I have a freedom here, and I live under the said Kim-Trang, 73, who became a U.S.
citizen in 1980. I met them, the Americans were really nice They opened their arms to us. If they open their arms, we know where to Cuba, 1980 Mabel arrived at Key in a ing boat rented by her uncle, was one of about 125,000 Cubans who got parole in 1980. They were processed at refugee camps in South Florida. family disapproved of the Cu- ban government and in April 1980 leader Fidel Castro unexpectedly announced that any Cuban who wanted could leave the island from the port city of Mariel.
Mabel, then 11, relied on an uncle who had lived in Miami for almost 10 years. He rented a boat for her, her par- ents, and older sister, who was 16. They left their home in Havana for the port city of Mariel and found the boat was in bad shape, and full of people. Mabel, her mother and her sister boarded another boat carrying women and children. Her father and un- cle stayed in the damaged boat, which was towed by an- other until a U.S.
Coast Guard vessel rescued them. After a night of sailing, they reunited in Key West as part of what became known as the Mariel boat lift. The mother, who was a seamstress in Cuba, worked in a clothing factory in Miami. The father drove trucks, like he did in Cuba, until a few years later he opened a trans- portation company for the elderly. Four years later the family had their own house, with a room for each person.
Cuba things were very difficult, very said Junco, now 55 and a teacher in Jacksonville, Florida. life has given us many opportunities, we have fought forward my parents always taught us that you come to work, and you do not get anything free from the GISELA SALOMON Associated Press oe Biden has made more use of immigration than any American president to bypass an uncooperative Congress, but hardly the The presidential power has been a centerpiece of strategy to channel immigrants through new and expanded legal pathways and discourage ille- gal crossings, a radical difference from his rival Donald Trump. Biden granted at least 1 million temporary visits, which generally include eligibility to work. Trump has said during his campaign to return to the White House that he would end the abuse of Parole, created under a 1952 law, allows the president to admit people on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or public It has been ordered 126 times by every president since then except for Trump, according to David Bier of the pro-immigration Cato Institute. The Associated Press spoke with immigrants who arrived during four major parole waves over the past 72 years.
WORLDVIEW IMMIGRATION Election could test humanitarian parole Refugees caught in middle amid political wrangling over law ASSOCIATED PRESS Dozens of tanks guard the intersection that leads to the Danube Bridge during the Hungarian Insurrection on Nov. 2, 1956, in Budapest. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 lets the president grant entry for humanitarian reasons and matters of public interest. Previous administrations have admitted large numbers of Hungarians, Vietnamese and Cubans. KRISZTA LAUER NAGY Edith Lauer stands outside the Millennium Gate Museum in October 2022 in Atlanta, during the unveiling of the 1956 Hungarian Freedom Fighter Statue.
JAQUES LANGEVIN, ASSOCIATED PRESS A Cuban soldier stands by a refugee ship April 23, 1980, at the small port of Mariel, Cuba, as the refugees aboard wait to sail for U.S. to start new lives. ARIANA CUBILLOS, ASSOCIATED PRESS Standing next to a portrait of late President Hugo Chavez, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro delivers his annual address to the nation Jan. 12, 2023, in Caracas, Venezuela. More than 7.7 million Venezuelans have the country over the past decade.
Kim-Trang Junco Guevara KIM KI SAM, ASSOCIATED PRESS Refugees crowd a naval vessel docked April 9, 1975, near Saigon, just before the capital of South Vietnam fell to North Vietnamese communist forces. Hungary, 1956 Edith Lauer was a 14-year-old student when she left Budapest with her parents and older sister Nora in November 1956. Her parents felt unsafe after Soviet tanks invaded, crushing a short-lived revolt against the Moscow-controlled government. Many including about 32,000 who were paroled in the United States. knew that if they waited around, they would be arrested, (possibly) tried in a communist trial and or Lauer, 81, recalled from her Cleveland home.
The four went to a military base in Munich, where they stayed for weeks until her cousin spon- sored them and offered his house in Silver Spring, Maryland. Edith Lauer arrived by military plane at Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, a former army camp converted to Hungar- ian refugee housing. God, this is freedom, democracy, it was just a totally different she remembers thinking. recognize that very, very soon, and everybody was so welcoming and so Her father, a lawyer and the only one in the family who spoke English, became a librarian at the Library of Congress. Her mother started as a dishwasher and went on to work at a laboratory producing serum from monkeys.
Lauer graduated from Texas University and be- came a teacher; she founded a organization to promote understanding of her people..
