WEBVTT FILE X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=MPEGTS:0,LOCAL:00:00:00.000 1 00:00:05.038 --> 00:00:05.672 Two years 2 00:00:05.672 --> 00:00:08.808 ago, two planes of migrants landed in Martha's Vineyard. 3 00:00:08.942 --> 00:00:13.113 Reporter Mike Damiano spoke to them about their lives. Now. 4 00:00:16.016 --> 00:00:16.549 Two years 5 00:00:16.549 --> 00:00:19.586 ago, two private jets landed at the Martha's 6 00:00:19.586 --> 00:00:23.373 Vineyard airport carrying 49 migrants, mostly from Venezuela. 7 00:00:23.790 --> 00:00:27.260 The planes were sent by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis 8 00:00:27.293 --> 00:00:32.816 as a sort of gambit to call the attention of northern states of Massachusetts 9 00:00:32.816 --> 00:00:37.220 liberals to what he considered a crisis of immigration at the southern border. 10 00:00:37.253 --> 00:00:40.073 They landed. They walked out onto an airstrip. 11 00:00:40.073 --> 00:00:42.358 They didn't really have any sense of where they were. 12 00:00:42.358 --> 00:00:45.662 And no one in a position of authority on Martha's Vineyard 13 00:00:45.662 --> 00:00:48.381 or in the state of Massachusetts knew they were coming. 14 00:00:48.381 --> 00:00:49.399 Word trickled out. 15 00:00:49.399 --> 00:00:52.669 The 49 people were here with backpacks and not much else. 16 00:00:52.852 --> 00:00:55.255 They ended up staying at a church. 17 00:00:55.255 --> 00:00:56.873 Local good Samaritans responded. 18 00:00:56.873 --> 00:00:58.942 They brought food and clothing. 19 00:00:58.942 --> 00:01:00.260 The people of Massachusetts 20 00:01:00.260 --> 00:01:03.947 and of Martha's Vineyard saying to Ron DeSantis, you're wrong. 21 00:01:04.097 --> 00:01:08.518 We won't turn our backs on migrants just because they show up in our backyard. 22 00:01:08.551 --> 00:01:13.373 We will stick to our pro-immigration principles and welcome people. 23 00:01:13.406 --> 00:01:15.692 Fast forward two years and the Martha's Vineyard 24 00:01:15.692 --> 00:01:18.144 migrants are facing a new reality. 25 00:01:18.144 --> 00:01:24.234 They're really now part of the much larger group of tens of thousands of migrants 26 00:01:24.234 --> 00:01:27.737 who have come to Massachusetts in the past three years. 27 00:01:27.771 --> 00:01:30.023 They are in the same systems. 28 00:01:30.023 --> 00:01:32.492 They are battling with the same bureaucracies. 29 00:01:32.492 --> 00:01:33.393 They are. 30 00:01:33.393 --> 00:01:36.596 Some of them are worried about deportation to the same extent. 31 00:01:37.230 --> 00:01:38.748 Some some members of the group 32 00:01:38.748 --> 00:01:42.502 ended up living with host families on Cape Cod, and they've done pretty well. 33 00:01:42.535 --> 00:01:45.872 They got a lot of support early on is it helps them transition 34 00:01:45.872 --> 00:01:48.858 to an independent, you know, self-sufficient life. 35 00:01:49.109 --> 00:01:50.276 Other members of the group 36 00:01:50.276 --> 00:01:54.531 have ended up really disconnected from those initial networks of support. 37 00:01:54.564 --> 00:01:57.617 We write about one woman, we call her Australia. 38 00:01:57.617 --> 00:01:59.369 That's her middle name. 39 00:01:59.369 --> 00:02:01.771 She couldn't get a work permit. She couldn't get work. 40 00:02:01.771 --> 00:02:04.757 She said, I didn't come here to have the government support me. 41 00:02:04.824 --> 00:02:08.211 And she heard that maybe there would be more opportunities in Detroit. 42 00:02:08.845 --> 00:02:12.482 So she moved there with her boyfriend and her daughter. 43 00:02:12.565 --> 00:02:14.701 It hasn't gone to plan. 44 00:02:14.701 --> 00:02:17.220 I mean, she's found herself really disconnected. 45 00:02:17.220 --> 00:02:22.192 She's essentially undocumented, kind of living in the shadows in Detroit. 46 00:02:22.559 --> 00:02:26.763 We read about another man named Du Baldo, who is sort of an in-between outcome. 47 00:02:26.779 --> 00:02:30.717 He's had one big success, which is that after coming here alone, 48 00:02:31.050 --> 00:02:34.254 he's been able to bring his wife and daughters here 49 00:02:34.254 --> 00:02:38.391 from Venezuela illegally using a Biden administration program. 50 00:02:38.641 --> 00:02:44.180 On the other hand, he's still struggling to establish a steady life here. 51 00:02:44.247 --> 00:02:46.399 He doesn't yet have a work permit. 52 00:02:46.399 --> 00:02:51.120 He's in a subsidized apartment, but that subsidy will at some point run out. 53 00:02:51.137 --> 00:02:54.140 You see, in his situation what we described as the limbo 54 00:02:54.207 --> 00:02:57.744 that so many of the members of this group find themselves 55 00:02:57.744 --> 00:02:59.279 in, they've been here for two years. 56 00:02:59.279 --> 00:03:02.248 They don't want to go back to their home countries. 57 00:03:02.248 --> 00:03:06.169 They haven't realized the kinds of dreams that they came here with. 58 00:03:06.269 --> 00:03:09.989 One of the big differences between then and now is that when the Martha's Vineyard 59 00:03:09.989 --> 00:03:15.461 migrants arrived here, immigration wasn't really on the minds of the public 60 00:03:15.478 --> 00:03:19.465 as a major public policy issue in this state. 61 00:03:19.682 --> 00:03:21.084 Since then, things have completely changed. 62 00:03:21.084 --> 00:03:23.670 Tens of thousands more people have come here. 63 00:03:23.670 --> 00:03:27.740 The state shelter system is capped because it's full 64 00:03:27.740 --> 00:03:29.309 and they don't want to expand it. 65 00:03:29.309 --> 00:03:34.847 Municipalities are starting to feel the burden of incorporating 66 00:03:34.847 --> 00:03:39.652 many new people who need a lot of help into their public services 67 00:03:39.652 --> 00:03:44.040 and into their communities and into their schools, and the Martha's 68 00:03:44.040 --> 00:03:49.078 Vineyard migrants have lived through that transition from the early days 69 00:03:49.078 --> 00:03:53.132 of their time here, when the state kind of was just thinking 70 00:03:53.132 --> 00:03:58.621 about helping 49 people to today, when the state is thinking about 71 00:03:58.621 --> 00:04:03.843 the financial problems and the logistical challenges of incorporating tens 72 00:04:03.843 --> 00:04:06.829 of thousands of new people into the state 73 00:04:07.347 --> 00:04:09.983 for daily access to Boston Globe today. 74 00:04:09.983 --> 00:04:13.920 All segments and episodes are available on demand in the Boston 75 00:04:13.920 --> 00:04:15.855 Globe app by clicking Watch.