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What Americans want to know about life in Canada: Gun laws, citizenship, 'emotional support Canadians'

Elianna Lev
Thu., November 5, 2020

With the U.S. election winding down, many Americans are showing an interest in moving to Canada, which has peaked interest in things such as our gun laws, who's our "president" and how they can get some support amid these hard times. (Credit: Associated Press)

As U.S. election ballots continue to be counted, many Americans, aside from checking whether Joe Biden or Donald Trump has won yet, have been mulling what it would be like to check out Canada if the election results aren’t to their liking.

But moving is never easy: once you’ve looked up how to move to Canada, some of the more nuanced parts of Canadian life may remain a mystery. Yahoo Canada is here to break down everything you need to know if you want to move to Canada from the U.S., based on some of the top searches we’ve noticed on Google Trends throughout the 2020 U.S. Election.
What is the warmest place in Canada?

Victoria in British Columbia is the most western point of the country and also happens to be the warmest. Though their winters are often wet and grey, temperatures rarely dip below freezing and snow days are a novelty. During the coldest months (January and February), Victoria sees a high of around 8°C (46°F) and a low of 3°C (37°F). In the warmest month of August, there’s a high of around 24°C (75°F) and a low of 12°C (53°F).

View of the harbour of Victoria, Vancouver Island, B.C., Canada. (Getty)

How do you move to Canada from the U.S. and get a Canadian citizenship?

There seems to be a keen interest in learning more about the process of immigrating to Canada from the U.S. There are three main ways to do so: permanent residency, work permit or a study permit. To learn more about the details of how to move to Canada from the U.S, please read here.

What is Canada’s health care system, is it free?

Canadians have access to health insurance through a universal, public system. It’s not free, but it is paid largely by Canadian tax dollars, while each province and territory has its own health insurance plan. All permanent residents and citizens also receive medically necessary hospital and physician services for free. However, many Canadians have private insurance to cover services such as dental care and prescription drugs.
What are Canada’s gun laws?

The main three classes of firearms in Canada are restricted, non-restricted and prohibited. Shotguns and standard rifles are non-restricted guns, which don’t need to be registered, unless you’re in Quebec. Certain types of handguns, like the ones small enough to be hidden, are prohibited in Canada. If a firearm is not considered prohibited, it is instead considered restricted and needs to be registered. Prohibited firearms include modified handguns and automatic rifles.

If you want to buy or possess a firearm, you’ll need to have a license. This requires completing the Canada Firearms Safety Course. If you’d like to own a restricted firearm, you must take a separate course. Once these courses are passed and you’ve received your license, it has to be renewed every five years. This is done through an application process, as well as completing a background check. Click here to learn more.

'Thank God I'm in Canada': dual citizens living in Eastern Ontario react to U.S. election


What type of government does Canada have, is it socialist?

Despite what some people may think, Canada is not a socialist country. It is a democracy with federal elections every four years at most, however if parliament dissolves prior to that date, an election may be held sooner. Canada has three levels of government: federal, provincial and municipal. On the federal level, the prime Minister is the top dog, and he, along with members of parliament in Ottawa, deal with national issues like:
mail
taxes
money
banking
shipping
railways
pipelines
telephones
criminal law
foreign affairs
national defence
employment insurance
Aboriginal lands and rights

Parliament is broken down into three levels:
the Sovereign (Queen or King)
the Senate
the House of Commons

Canada is a constitutional monarchy, which means the queen or king is technically our head of state, while the Prime Minister is the head of government.

On a provincial and territorial level, the Premier is at the top of command. Those governments are in charge of handling issues like:
education
health care
road regulations

The municipal government is led by a mayor. These governments run cities, towns or districts (municipalities) and are in charge of issues like:
parks
parking
libraries
roadways
local police
local land use
fire protection
public transportation
community water systems

Throughout Canada, there are also First Nation communities, where band councils govern, similar to municipal governments. Decisions in the community are made by band council, which are elected by band members.



Who is Canada’s President?

Canada doesn’t have a president, it has a prime minister. Canada’s current prime minister is Justin Trudeau. Canada also has a governor general, who represents the king or queen when they are not present in the country (Queen Elizabeth II’s most recent visit to Canada was in 2010). The current governor general of Canada is Julie Payette.

What are Canada’s tax rates?

Canadian tax rates depend on your income bracket. How much you’ll be taxed depends on how much you make in a year. These amounts are adjusted each year according to inflation.

2019 Federal income tax brackets & rates

$47,630 or less
15%


$47,630 to $95,259
20.5%


$95,259 to $147,667
26%


$147,667 to $210,371
29%


More than $210,371
33%

‘Canadian tuxedo’: What is it and its origin?

This is a sartorial statement where denim is layered over several items of clothing — denim jeans with a denim shirt and a denim jacket, for example. The Canadian tuxedo is said to have first been worn by American singer Bing Crosby, who was nearly denied a hotel room in Vancouver as a result of his casual attire. Also see: Toques, flannel, and Hudson Bay blankets.

A 'Canadian tuxedo' is a term used for denim-on-denim outfits, such as a denim jacket worn with a pair of jeans, often in the same shade of blue. (Getty)


What’s an emotional support Canadian?

On U.S. election night, a Twitter user by the handle @Darth_Pingu tweeted out to Americans that there would be “Emotional Support Canadians” on standby. The tweet garnered over 20,000 retweets, and lots of engagement from Americans, looking for care packages of Timbits and maple syrup.

On a related note, most Canadians will already be familiar with the original Emotional Support Canadian.

Mr. Dressup, a.k.a. Ernie Coombs, was a mainstay of Canadian children's television for many years, entertaining youngsters from 1967 to 1996, and could be considered the ultimate Emotional Support Canadian.
(Photo by Rene Johnston/Toronto Star via Getty Images)

'Don't come to Canada. Fix your country': U.S. election drama brings out 'Emotional Support Canadians', but not everyone wants Americans to move

Ahmar Khan
Fri., November 6, 2020,

Three days removed from election night in the United States, tensions remain high as a handful of states will determine the presidency. A few percentage points in Arizona, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Nevada separate Joe Biden and Donald Trump. In fact, the vote totals are too close for most news organizations to make calls, and as a result a lot of people on both sides of aisles and north of the border are feeling some angst.

Once the election results began coming out, some Canadians could sense their neighbours to the south needed support, and some Twitter users were offering their services as “emotional support Canadians.”

With the poll totals in some states moving at what feels like a snails pace,

“emotional support” people are starting to offer creative and helpful solutions 

to bide the time.

While some Canadians are happy to take the load of Americans, 

many are not open to the idea of residents flooding the borders

 — especially if Trump is the reason they’re fleeing.

While the election result has been slow to come in

and there’s been disinformation flying about from the 

Trump side, some Canadians cannot get their eyes off the chaos.

With absentee ballots being counted and a good chance results

 in Pennsylvania and potentially Arizona and Nevada won’t roll in

until Friday, some Canadians are poking fun at the slow pace of 

the vote counting. To be fair, American ballots are far more complex,

 often with multiple choices and need to be verified with scrutineers 

from both parties on hand.

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 Kamala Harris's Victory Speech as Vice-President Elect

Marie Claire November 7, 2020



Photo credit: Tasos Katopodis - Getty Images

Good evening! Good evening. Good evening. Good evening. Thank you, thank you. Good evening. So, thank you, good evening. So, Congressman John Lewis, Congressman John Lewis before his passing wrote "Democracy is not a state, it is an act." And what he meant was that America's democracy is not guaranteed.

It is only as strong as our willingness to fight for it. To guard it and never take it for granted. And protecting our democracy takes struggle. It takes sacrifice. But there is joy in it.

And there is progress. Because we, the people, have the power to build a better future.

And when our very democracy was on the ballot in this election with the very soul of America at stake and the world watching, you ushered in a new day for America. To our campaign staff and volunteers, this extraordinary team, thank you for bringing more people than ever before into the democratic process.

And so making this victory possible. To the poll workers and election officials across our country who have worked tirelessly to make sure every vote is counted, our nation owes you a debt of gratitude.

You have protected the integrity of our democracy. And to the American people who make up our beautiful country, thank you for turning out in record numbers to make your voices heard. And I know times have been challenging, especially the last several months.

The grief, sorrow, and pain, the worries and the struggles, but we have also witnessed your courage, your resilience and the generosity of your spirit. For four years, you marched and organized for equality and justice, for our lives and for our planet and then you voted!

And you delivered a clear message. You chose hope and unity, decency, science, and yes, truth! You chose Joe Biden as the next president of the United States of America!

And Joe is a healer, a uniter, a tested and steady hand. A person whose own experience of loss gives him a sense of purpose that will help us as a nation reclaim our own sense of purpose. And a man with a big heart who loves with abandon. It's his love for Jill, who will be an incredible first lady.

It's his love for Hunter and Ashley and his grandchildren and the entire Biden family. And while I first knew Joe as vice president, I really got to know him as the father who loved Beau, my dear friend who we remember here today.

And to my husband Doug and our children Cole and Ella and my sister Maya and our whole family, I love y'all more than I can ever express. We are so grateful to Joe and Jill for welcoming our family into theirs on this incredible journey. And to the woman most responsible for my presence here today, my mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, who is always in our hearts. When she came here from India at the age of 19, she maybe didn't quite imagine this moment.

But she believed so deeply in an America where a moment like this is possible, and so I am thinking about her and about the generations of women, Black women, Asian, white, Latina, Native American women, who throughout our nation's history, have paved the way for this moment tonight, women who fought and sacrificed so much for equality and liberty and justice for all. Including the Black women who are often, too often overlooked but so often proved they are the backbone of our democracy.

All the women who have worked to secure and protect the right to vote for over a century 100 years ago with the 19th Amendment, 55 years ago with the Voting Rights Act and now in 2020 with a new generation of women in our country who cast their ballots and continued the fight for their fundamental right to vote and be heard.

Tonight, I reflect on their struggle, their determination and the strength of their vision to see what can be unburdened by what has been. And I stand on their shoulders. And what a testament it is to Joe's character that he had the audacity to break one of the most substantial barriers that exists in our country and select a woman as his vice president.

But while I may be the first woman in this office, I will not be the last. Because every little girl watching tonight sees that this is a country of possibilities and to the children of our country regardless of your gender, our country has sent you a clear message: Dream with ambition, lead with conviction and see yourselves in a way that others may not simply because they've never seen it before.

But know that we will applaud you every step of the way. And to the American people, no matter who you voted for, I will strive to be a vice president like Joe was to President Obama: loyal, honest, and prepared; waking up every day thinking of you and your family, because now is when the real work begins, the hard work, the necessary work, the good work, the essential work to save lives and beat this epidemic.

To rebuild our economy so it works for working people, to root out systemic racism in our justice system and society. To combat the climate crisis, to unite our country and heal the soul of our nation. And the road ahead will not be easy. But America is ready. And so are Joe and I.

We have elected a president who represents the best in us, a leader the world will respect and our children will look up to. A commander in chief who will respect our troops and keep our country safe and a president for all Americans.

Kamala Harris Wears Suffragette White to Deliver Victory Speech

Marie Claire November 7, 2020


Photo credit: Tasos Katopodis - Getty ImagesMore

Tonight, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris addressed the nation in Wilmington, ahead of President-elect Joe Biden. For the occasion, Harris—who will be the first woman to hold the office of Vice President of the United States, as well as the first vice president who is Black and of South Asian descent, making history—wore all white, a nod to the suffragette movement.

In the early 1900s, the suffragettes wore white to attend marches, and recently many women politicians have worn the color as a political statement. In 2019, several freshman congresswomen including Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Madeleine Dean, and Ilhan Omar wore white suits to their swearing-in ceremony, and Hillary Clinton wore white during her run for president in 2016 as well as to Donald Trump's inauguration—quite the message.

"While I might be the first woman in this office, I will not be the last," Harris said in her address as hundreds in the crowd cheered. "Because every little girl watching tonight sees this is a country of possibilities."


Photo credit: ROBERTO SCHMIDT - Getty Images

"Dream with ambition," she said to all the little girls watching. "Lead with conviction, and see yourselves in a way that others will not simply because they haven't seen it before. but know we will applaud you every step of the way."

In her speech, Harris thanked the poll workers who worked tirelessly over the last few days, and, of course, the people who turned up to vote. "For four years you marched for equality, justice, for our lives and for our planet. And then you voted. And you delivered a clear message: You chose hope and unity, decency, science, and yes, truth. You chose Joe Biden as the next President of the United States of America."

A moment in history we will never forget.

Kamala Harris Telling Her Great-Niece

 “You Could Be President” Is Going Viral



Let this be your election week balm.

After days of waiting on election results, it's finally official: Kamala Harris has been elected as the first female vice president, as well as the first Black and South Asian-American V.P.

Once the news was confirmed, people began celebrating the historical significance of the moment on Twitter.

Harris was also the second-ever Black woman and first South Asian-American to serve on the U.S. Senate when she was elected in 2017.

"When I was elected the first woman district attorney of San Francisco, and I was the first woman of color to be elected district attorney of any county in California, which is a state of 40 million people," Harris said about breaking barriers during an interview in 2019. "When I was attorney general of California, and elected to the United States Senate … so it’s pretty much every race I’ve run."

Harris, who was running for president at the time before dropping out of the race and being named as Biden's VP nominee, said, "Reporters will ask me, what do you think about this whole question of ‘is America ready for you?’ What I tell them is, you know what? This is not a new conversation for me. I’ve heard this conversation every time I have — and now here’s the operative word — won. But every time, every time, I ran for these offices: They’re not ready for you. It’s not your turn. It’s not your time. Nobody like you has done this before. Oh, I think you’d be great, but I don’t think everybody else is ready. And I didn’t listen. And of course we won. But the more important point that I’m making here is you didn’t listen. The people didn’t listen."

She added, "We cannot wait for other people to give us permission, to tell us what is possible."

Harris was also the second-ever Black woman and first South Asian-American to serve on the U.S. Senate when she was elected in 2017.

PURGES BEGIN
Trump administration fires three agency heads in wake of US election


James Crump
Sat., November 7, 2020

Deputy Administrator of USAID Bonnie Glick speaks during an event for the W-GDP, Global Womens Development and Prosperity Initiative plan, at the State Department in Washington, DC on 11 August 2020 ((AFP via Getty Images))

The Trump administration has fired the heads of three federal agencies, in the wake of the 2020 US election.

The administration fired Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), Bonnie Glick, deputy administrator of the US Agency for International Development, and Neil Chatterjee, chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).

Ms Gordon-Hagerty, who was on Donald Trump’s shortlist to replace former national security adviser John Bolton in 2019, was forced to resign on Friday, according to the New York Post. She was the first woman to oversee the National Nuclear Security Administration.

Republican senator Jim Inhofe, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, issued a statement on Friday, in which he said that the energy secretary Dan Brouillette “effectively demanded” Ms Gordon-Hagerty’s resignation.

Mr Inhofe called Ms Gordon-Hagerty “an exemplary public servant and remarkable leader”.

He added that Mr Brouillette’s decision “during this time of uncertainty demonstrates he doesn’t know what he’s doing in national security matters and shows a complete lack of respect for the semi-autonomous nature of NNSA”.

Ms Glick was replaced by the acting administrator John Barsa, who had to step down from his more senior role under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, which limits how long someone can serve in a role.

While, Mr Chatterjee, who is a former aide to Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, was sacked as chairman, he will remain at the agency as a commissioner, according to NPR.

Mr Chatterjee told the Washington Examiner that he felt that “perhaps” the Trump administration had retaliated against him for his opinions on carbon mitigation, which involves reductions in human emissions of greenhouse gases.

Mr Trump, who has expressed skepticism about the validity of climate change, was very vocal about the FERC pursuing implementing pro-fossil fuel policies, according to the Post.

“I have obviously been out there promoting a conservative, market-based approach to carbon mitigation and sending signals the commission is open to considering a carbon price, and perhaps that led to this,” he said.

“Quite frankly, if, in fact, this was retribution for my independence, I am quite proud of that.”

The White House declined to comment to the Post about the firings and refused to confirm if more should be expected amid Mr Trump’s election defeat.

The Independent has contacted the White House and a representative of Mr Brouillette for comment.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Gives Warning About What Trump Sycophants Might Do Now



Lee Moran
Reporter, HuffPost,
HuffPost•November 7, 2020


Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) on Friday suggested that, now that Donald Trump’s time in the White House appears to be over, some of the president’s staunchest supporters may now try to pivot away from him.

As the winner of 2020 election remained undeclared, but with Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden on the cusp of victory, Ocasio-Cortez asked on Twitter if anyone was “archiving these Trump sycophants for when they try to downplay or deny their complicity in the future?”

“I foresee decent probability of many deleted Tweets, writings, photos in the future,” added the New York lawmaker, who won reelection this week.


In a second tweet, Ocasio-Cortez laughed at the idea of the “party of personal responsibility” — the GOP’s ostensible platform, at least before the Trump era ― “being upset at the idea of being responsible for their behavior over last four years.”


With the election still to be called, Trump has split Republicans over the past few days, as he attacked the democratic process and spread baseless conspiracy theories about mass voter fraud.

RED BAITING WORKS IN AN ECHO CHAMBER
‘People believe it.’ Republicans’ drumbeat of socialism helped win voters in Miami

Andres Viglucci, David Smiley, Lautaro Grinspan, Antonio Maria Delgado
Sat., November 7, 2020


Two nights before the Nov. 3 election, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio stood before thousands of Donald Trump’s supporters and said something he had to know was untrue:

“Not all Democrats are socialists,” Rubio said, setting up a punchline for the masses gathered at the Miami-Opa Locka Executive Airport to see Trump speak. “But all socialists are Democrats.”

In a state where 1,157 voters are registered to the Party for Socialism and Liberation, the statement by Rubio — the Cuban-American acting chairman of the U.S. Senate intelligence committee — was false. But in Miami, it was too effective not to keep repeating.

Republicans’ use of “socialism” rhetoric to browbeat Democrats — an old tactic resurrected and seemingly perfected by Trump — has been persistent and widespread, a talking point that has seen heavy rotation on Fox News and even permeated communities in Central Florida like The Villages, where white, conservative retirees talk openly about not wanting to become socialist Venezuela.

But it has been most effective in Miami-Dade County, where exaggerated fears of Democrats ushering in a leftist dictatorship have shifted the political landscape in Florida to the right and left neighbors and families deeply at odds. The county’s dramatic swing toward Trump in 2020 helped him win the state by more than 370,000 votes.

“When you repeat something over and over again, people believe it and take it seriously,” said José ‘Cucho’ Vivas, a Venezuelan-American voter who told the Miami Herald his family received threats after they posted online photos of themselves with “Venezolanos con Biden” signs in support of then-Democratic nominee Joe Biden. “And that’s what the Republican strategy has been.”

The drumbeat began well before the president’s re-election campaign was formally launched. After Trump’s 2016 election, GOP strategists looking for ways to eat into Democrats’ heavy, historic advantage in Miami-Dade leaned into the “socialist” tag to reach a large, receptive and largely conservative audience: Cuban and other Hispanic immigrant and refugee populations from countries where leftist regimes or guerrillas have wreaked political, economic and social havoc.

And even as Democratic standard-bearer Joe Biden — a lifelong moderate effectively caricatured as a puppet for the left by Trump and his local backers — appears set to move into the White House, the divisions and false perceptions fed by the campaign will linger.
‘The same can happen here’

“He’s managed to put together a lot of fear-mongering and has stoked up a great deal of resentment,” said sociologist Lisandro Perez, a veteran expert on Miami’s Cuban exile and Hispanic populations, of Trump. “That won’t go away when he goes away.”

Biden’s popular-vote and electoral-college win hasn’t swayed Hispanic voters like Jose Edgardo Gomez, a Venezuelan-American county resident, who likely spoke for many when he said he saw no difference between the Democrat and socialist autocrats back home.

“I voted for Trump to prevent the United States from resembling countries like Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. Biden is basically the same,” Gomez said in an interview. “We want the United States to continue being free and to continue having a true democracy. We are surprised to see how many Americans don’t understand the threats that socialism posses. We have lost our freedom in our countries, and the same can happen here.”

The GOP’s campaign among Miami-Dade’s Hispanics proved ruinously effective for Biden’s chances in Florida, likely playing a major role in Trump’s relatively easy win in the usually close battleground state. The Democratic presidential ticket’s advantage in the left-leaning county shrank from 30% during Hillary Clinton’s run in 2016 to 7% this Election Day, allowing Trump to more than make up that smaller difference with gains elsewhere in the state.

And while precise numbers on Hispanic turnout and voting patterns aren’t yet available, majority-Hispanic districts and precincts clearly swung in Trump’s favor. For instance, in overwhelmingly Hispanic and Cuban Hialeah, where Trump and Clinton split the vote four years ago, the president garnered around 66% support on Tuesday. Some analysts believe Trump won as much as half of non-Cuban Hispanic voters in Miami-Dade, a group Biden’s campaign thought would broadly back him.

Trump’s campaign in Miami-Dade played out on several fronts, much of it in Spanish: in the traditional form of TV ads, mailers and rallies, as well as on the newer frontier of social media. On Spanish-language talk-show radio and on social media, in particular, Trump’s sometimes unofficial backers carried out what some critics have described as a brutal and relentless campaign of disinformation and distortion that often promulgated conspiratorial memes to paint Biden and Democrats as dangerous radicals, and worse.

At times, as it did across the country in pitching its message to a white conservative majority, the campaign played on the racial fears of an immigrant Hispanic population that mostly identifies as white, depicting Black Lives Matter activists and the summer’s widespread protests over police brutality against Black people as threatening and communist-inspired — labels that by extension were also applied to Biden’s Black running mate, Kamala Harris.

“That whole law-and-order thing, antifa, and all these Blacks who are coming to your house — for Cubans, that whole theme of disorder also had some resonance,” Perez, the sociologist, said. “It stokes fear in a lot of Cubans.”
The ‘comunista’ label never went entirely away

To be sure, many Miami-Dade Hispanic voters needed no priming to cast their lot with Trump.

Voters of Cuban, Cuban-American and Nicaraguan backgrounds, in particular, have for decades provided a broad and dependable base of support for GOP candidates and conservative policies. That’s in sharp contrast with the more-liberal sympathies of the country’s largest Hispanic group, Mexicans and Mexican-Americans, and other large, U.S.-born Latino populations like Puerto Ricans, whose support Democrats have long assumed.

But the potency and open use of the once-common “comunista” label in Miami politics, though never entirely gone, seemed to fade in recent years as first-generation exiles became less active or passed away. The local Hispanic vote began to split, with roughly as many supporting Democratic candidates in presidential elections, especially as many younger, U.S.-raised Latinos and Cuban Americans embraced more-liberal viewpoints.

That may be changing back.

The rise of self-described democratic socialists such as U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the push in some corners of the Democratic Party to nationalize health insurance have created fertile soil for Republicans to plant the seed. And Democrats like New York mayor and former presidential candidate Bill DeBlasio, who repeated a Cuban Revolution rallying cry — “Hasta la victoria, siempre!” — last summer when Miami hosted the first Democratic presidential primary, unintentionally watered it.

Surveys suggest that recent arrivals from Cuba have flocked to the GOP generally, and Trump in particular. After living their entire previous lives amid the economic austerity and repression of the island’s communist regime, they may be more responsive to the “socialist” tagging than second- and third-generation Cuban Americans, observers say. Many of those more recent exiles and immigrants were enthusiastic participants in the banner-bedecked Trump caravans that crisscrossed the county in the closing weeks of the campaign.

The suspicions that many Cuban Americans harbor about Democrats and the Democratic Party go back almost 60 years, to 1961, when President John F. Kennedy withheld air support during the Bay of Pigs invasion that unsuccessfully attempted to topple Fidel Castro’s government. Even as those suspicions have waxed and waned, it continues to be fodder for Little Havana newspapers and radio stations.

An example during the campaign were columns that appeared in LIBRE, one of Miami’s old-line Cuban exile newspapers. El Nuevo Herald, the Miami Herald’s Spanish-language sister publication, unwittingly gave some of LIBRE’s rabidly anti-Democrat writings added exposure when it included copies of the publication for eight months as an advertising insert in printed copies that no one at the company reviewed. The relationship was terminated after a reader complained.

“We still have to parse out where the Cuban vote went,” said Perez, a longtime Florida International University professor who now teaches at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. “The whole red-baiting, communist thing we’ve had here all along, but I do think it has a greater resonance this time among many Cubans.”
Amplifying Trump’s anti-socialist message

But one key to the GOP’s efficacy on Trump’s behalf was its ability to dice up its appeal to local Hispanic populations by nationality. The campaign expanded its voting base broadly by pitching its Democrat-bashing message to the specific fears and concerns of a small but growing segment of Venezuelans who have fled the regimes of socialist autocrats Hugo Chavez and Nicolás Maduro, to Colombians who experienced decades of civil war with Marxist guerrillas, and smaller blocs of conservative Hispanic immigrants worried about the impact of liberal Democratic economic policies they may see as socialistic.

The pitch was two-fold: Not only is Biden either an outright socialist or a patsy for his party’s growing left wing, but he’s likely to surrender to, or even embrace, socialism abroad in places like Venezuela and Cuba. So canny was the campaign that Latino staffers adopted terms like “Castro-Chavismo” — a buzzword used by right-wing conservatives in Colombia to describe the spread of leftist regimes in Latin America — to link Colombians to the rhetoric used to reach Nicaraguan, Venezuelan and Cuban communities.

The GOP also touted an unsolicited Biden endorsement by Gustavo Petro, a former Colombian presidential candidate and guerrilla member for the militia group M-19. “Joe Biden is a Castro-Chavismo candidate,” said one digital attack ad in Spanish that had more than 76,000 views on YouTube and was widely written about in Colombian media.

In doing so, one analyst said, the Trump campaign significantly amplified its anti-socialist message to a receptive audience locally and beyond.

“The fear-mongering anti-communist strategy will always have a market in the U.S.,” said Aquiles Este, a political consultant in Miami who focuses on South Florida’s Hispanic voters. “And if you have a Democratic Party heavily laced towards the far left, there will always be an audience willing to buy that narrative and to vote in response to those fears.

“The Venezuelan voter is a marginal subgroup that has no real weight on the election, but the Venezuelan plight has become an issue that has great resonance within the Cuban, Colombian and Central American communities.”
Unexpected GOP wins

To many of those voters who experienced political and economic dislocation first-hand, that message rang strong and true, interviews suggest.

Oswaldo Navarro, 44, moved to Miami from Venezuela in January with his 14-year-old son, who needed better medical care than was available back home for a critical kidney ailment. Navarro said he became caught up in the presidential campaign because he saw Trump as fighting the socialism he had just fled. Though he can’t vote in the United States, Navarro was out at the Kendale Lakes public library every day campaigning for the Republican Party.

“The initial offer [of socialism] looks pretty good,” Navarro said. “But it’s a terrible formula.”

The Trump campaign’s courting of Miami-Dade’s Hispanic voters was patient and calculating — and helped vault local GOP candidates to often-unexpected wins in congressional and state legislative races.

As early as 2016, Trump traveled to Miami to accept the endorsement of the Bay of Pigs veterans association. Since then, he has visited Miami to sign an executive order restricting U.S. interaction with Cuba, held a rally at FIU to declare the twilight of socialism under his administration, and met with Cuban and Venezuelan exiles in more-intimate settings. Vice President Mike Pence also made repeated visits to South Florida on behalf of Trump to meet with exile leaders.

Pence also came to Miami to help formally launch Latinos for Trump, a coalition devoted to mobilizing the Hispanic community in part by using anti-socialist language to characterize the Democratic Party.

The campaign also deployed a large platoon of local acolytes and allies, official and not. And it won eager support from social-media influencers such as well-known Cuban exile and anti-communist activist Alexander Otaola, who critics say has been one of the leading local purveyors of pro-Trump misinformation. Four years ago, Otaola voted for Democrat Hillary Clinton for president.

Rubio, while warming up the crowd in Opa-locka Sunday for the president, said people who push back against Republicans’ warnings about socialism and the Democratic Party as a smear “are the ones who are confused.”

“Part of the things you’ll hear them say is, ‘Well, they scared the people about socialism.’ This is not a group that needs to be scared about socialism. It’s seen it, face-to-face. It knows it’s reality,” said Rubio. “Another group of people will say, ‘They confused these people.’ These people are not the ones confused.”

Asked to comment for this article, Rubio’s office alluded to tensions among Democrats in Congress, who this week held a contentious conference call, with moderates warning that the party was shifting too far to the left as ideas like defunding the police become more mainstream.

“House Democrats and their campaign arms are in crisis mode after realizing that embracing socialism cost them elections in working class and minority communities across the nation,” Rubio’s spokesperson said. “To claim that socialism is not mainstream in the Democratic Party is laughable and devoid from reality.”
For Trump or against Biden?

Fear of socialism was not the only factor the campaign exploited successfully. It also targeted former President Barack Obama’s normalizing of relations with Cuba’s communist government and his inability to stymie Chavez and Maduro in Venezuela, hanging those policies and perceived failures on Biden, his vice-president. The Trump campaign often circulated a photo of an informal encounter in 2015 in Brazil between Biden and Maduro that appeared to show the two speaking warmly. Another popular image: a clip of Obama and Cuban Communist Party leader Raul Castro doing the wave while watching a baseball game in Havana in 2016.

The GOP campaign struck some traditional Republican themes as well, underscoring Trump’s business background, his tax cut and small-business-friendly policies — a message that played well with Miami-Dade’s entrepreneurial-heavy Cuban and Hispanic populations. A lot of the campaign’s Spanish-language TV ads, Perez said, claimed Biden would heavily tax and hurt small businesses.

Some Hispanic voters said their GOP vote was not so much for Trump as it was against Biden and the Democrats. José Rodríguez, 49, a Cuban American registered Republican and a self-employed computer technician, said he wasn’t the biggest Trump fan, but was willing to overlook his shortcomings.

“He talks too much, I know that,” Rodriguez said. “But it’s more of a vote against Democrats. I am really scared for our country and what it could become in the next four years.”

Other Hispanic Trump voters appeared to be in some degree of denial about some of the president’s most controversial policies and practices. Some affirmed erroneously that he favors immigration and embraces immigrants, and praised his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, widely seen as a failure that has led to a disproportionate level of deaths and infections among Latinos and other minorities, including in Miami and Florida.

Some Hispanics who have been in South Florida long enough acknowledge they know better, but still backed the Trump campaign.

Gustavo Garagorry, chair of the Venezuelan-American Republican Club of Miami-Dade, said he knows that Biden and most Democrats aren’t actually socialists. But he says a perceived leftward shift by the Democratic party over the course of the past four years played into the hands of Trump as he sought support among South Florida Latinos.

“Democrats have historically been moderate, centrists. But the reality is that, in this moment in time, the Democratic Party has become home to socialists and leftists and they’ve started to change the direction of the party,” Garagorry said. People like Bernie Sanders, he said, are “getting their voices heard more and more.”

The change in attitude among his Venezuelan peers from 2016 to this year has been dramatic, he said. Whereas he felt lonely as a pro-Trump Latino in 2015, when Trump launched his presidential campaign, now he feels embraced — a testament, he said, to the campaign’s success.

“Back then people were telling me that I was crazy,” he said. “They cut me as a friend. They stopped calling. They asked how it was possible for me to support [Trump].... But the curious thing is that all the other people, the people who criticized me at the beginning, today they tell me, ‘Gustavo, you were right. We support the president, too.’ So I’ve seen that change happen firsthand. I lived it. I’m still living it.”

He added: “Esto es un fenómeno,” or “It’s a phenomenon.”

The numbers bear that out: In Doral, the city Garagorry works in and home to the country’s largest concentration of Venezuelan-Americans, Trump turned a 40-point loss in 2016 into a narrow 1.4-point win in 2020.
Reflection of ‘Democratic party leadership’

Among the local Republican politicians who most eagerly emulated Trump’s “socialista”-mongering was Maria Elvira Salazar, a former TV journalist who defeated incumbent Democratic Rep. Donna Shalala in her second try by depicting the moderately liberal former University of Miami president and Clinton administration official as a radical.

In late October, Salazar ran a last-minute attack ad that jumped on an interview Shalala did on NBC 6, a Miami TV station. Shalala meant to call herself a “pragmatic capitalist” but accidentally said, “I’m a pragmatic socialist.” The two-second clip was played thousands of times in the race’s final days and featured in rafts of mailers sent to voters’ homes. Salazar later suggested Shalala had only herself to blame.

“Socialism? You can’t be playing around with that word. It’s too acidic. It’s too dangerous” in Miami-Dade, Salazar said, in an interview a day after her victory.

Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, Miami’s only Republican in the House of Representatives before Tuesday’s election, said Shalala in particular was undone by the Democratic Party’s leadership.

“That was less a reflection on Donna Shalala than it was on the Democratic Party’s leadership position of appeasing, playing footsies with and helping assist socialist dictatorships in our hemisphere,” Diaz-Balart said, referencing Biden’s position of wanting to undo the Trump reversal of Obama’s Cuba rapprochement and other polices on Latin America.

He also said new arrivals from Cuba and elsewhere are more likely to reject Democrats.

“What you’re seeing from them is a total rejection and it’s no longer just the Cubans, it’s South Florida non-Cuban Hispanics,” Diaz-Balart said. “What everyone in this community understands is that Cuba, Maduro, the FARC...they are all one and the same cancer.”

One of the key disputes in the conversation around the Democratic Party’s more progressive policies is whether they emulate European-style socialism or the socialism seen in Latin America.

“If you place it in the context of socialism in Europe, it’s not a very radical socialism,” Perez said. “The label for what goes on economically in Cuba is also socialism, but meaning the restrictions on your ability to make a living, the restriction on whether you can have your own business — socialism as this wealth-killing ideology.”

The Trump campaign’s success has also prompted a sharp backlash by Cuban American, Venezuelan and other Hispanic voters who backed Biden. Some say the campaign’s indiscriminate lobbing of anti-socialist rhetoric at Biden supporters stigmatized voters who didn’t back Trump or the GOP.

They say it’s fostered an atmosphere of public harassment and intimidation directed at Biden supporters that has bitterly split families, discouraged them from openly expressing their support for Democratic candidates, and at times caused them to fear for their physical safety. Some local Hispanic Biden voters who expressed support on social media say they’ve been shunned by friends and family members and subjected to threats and hostile accusations of harboring socialist or “chavista” sympathies.

One “Venezolanos con Biden” supporter, Adelys Ferro, said the anti-socialism rhetoric got so heated that some people in her community were simply scared to venture any criticism of Trump.

“We’ve reached such levels of fanaticism and cult-like behavior that if you step away from that cult, you get condemned. And that terrifies people,” Ferro said.

The tensions in Miami-Dade County this fall paled in comparison to the days when Miami politicians used to purchase remote car starters in case someone tried to blow them up in their own vehicle. But some say that Trump’s scorched-earth approach in Miami-Dade has left a toxic legacy that Hispanic residents will have to contend with for some time to come.

Now that Biden is projected to be president, some of his backers say Democrats can’t afford to repeat the mistake they made during the campaign — failing to reach out closely, personally and consistently enough to win over a majority of Miami-Dade’s Hispanic residents and overcome the “socialista” slurs of Trump and his backers.

“You need to keep educating people. You need to keep knocking on doors and explaining why [the socialism attacks] are not true,” said Cuban-American voter Clara Vargas, who spent the final days of the campaign canvassing in support of the Democratic ticket across the county with fellow members of her workers’ union, 32BJ SEIU.

“I personally don’t believe that fighting for a living wage and affordable healthcare is communist,” she said. Vargas added that there will always be people “who will see communism everywhere … but there are others who have a more open mind. I think that going out and knocking on doors and speaking to people will always move the needle.”

Ferro also sees a way out. She believes the relentless rhetoric around socialism could abate if Biden’s foreign policy decisions as president reflect a strong commitment to regime change in places like Venezuela.

“When my Venezuelan compatriots see Biden fighting for democracy and putting pressure on Maduro, I don’t think they will be able to say, ‘I was wrong.’ But hopefully at that point, much of this rhetoric will quiet down, and everyone will be able to keep enjoying the fruits of American capitalism,” Ferro said. “At least that’s what I hope will happen.”

Miami Herald reporters Karina Elwood and Alex Daugherty contributed to this report.