By Ana Rodriguez Soto - The Archdiocese of Miami

They both cried.

That’s what struck me while hearing Pedro Pans Maximo Alvarez and Tony Argiz recall their experience as unaccompanied children coming to a foreign land.

Days apart, they struggled to contain their tears at dueling press conferences: At the first (minute 26), Alvarez spoke in support of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ plan to revoke the license of shelters that house unaccompanied minors in Florida. At the second (minute 25), Argiz spoke in opposition.

The two traveled similar paths. Both rose from refugees to community leaders, from kids who didn’t speak a word of English to successful businessmen, founders of their own companies, and contributors to the well-being of many in South Florida.

United by memories and tears, they now are divided by politics.

Archbishop Thomas Wenski likes to say that immigration is a wedge issue for both parties. What more proof than these two men?

The governor’s plan directly affects the program that welcomed and sheltered them both: the Msgr. Bryan O. Walsh Children’s Village operated by Catholic Charities and named after the Miami priest both Alvarez and Argiz revere.

Msgr. Walsh’s and Operation Pedro Pan’s DNA are embedded in the system the U.S. government relies on today to care for children who enter the U.S without a parent. That’s what the Children’s Village, once known as Boystown, has done for the last six decades. That’s what 180 shelters, including the Children’s Village, continue to do for today’s unaccompanied minors.

Yet one group buys into the governor’s rhetoric that their exodus 60 years ago was different, more deserving of warm welcome and generous aid, than the exodus of today’s children.

One group came on airplanes, with passports and visa wavers issued by the U.S. government. They were fleeing communism. They came “legally.”

The others cross the border on foot, entrusted to smugglers rather than the Church, fleeing gangs rather than communism and mostly, in the governor’s parlance, “military aged males” ages 15 to 17 (the implication: possibly terrorists). Certainly, they’re not coming “legally.”

That’s where the wedge of partisan politics — in the form of an appeal to magical thinking — rears its divisive head.

DeSantis says he wants to protect Floridians and these children by discouraging their parents from sending them over. He and his supporters maintain that preventing shelters like Catholic Charities’ from taking them in will achieve both purposes.

But that’s like saying he wants to protect Floridians and drug addicts by shutting down detox facilities like St. Luke’s – also run by Catholic Charities. Or that shutting down Camillus House will end homelessness. Those ills, like the reasons people emigrate, are deep and complex and defy simplistic solutions.

Moreover, DeSantis and his lawyers know full well that states don’t make immigration policy. The federal government could keep sending unaccompanied minors to the Children’s Village and 15 other shelters in Florida without the governor’s permission.

So why pursue this fight? Let the governor pretend he’s doing something that appeals to his supporters but go on with the work. It’s just rhetoric.

Except that rhetoric has a cost. It creates unnecessary stress for those who work in those shelters, who, depending on the governor’s whims, could face fines or even criminal penalties for continuing to operate.

Worst of all, it creates unnecessary division. Immigrants have been coming to Florida for decades: refugees from the North as well as the South. Immigration cemented Miami’s place in the world. Studies have demonstrated that the generosity shown to the Pedro Pans – and wave after wave of Cubans who came after them – is what enabled their success.

At every turn, for reasons of politics or the bad optics of desperate people drowning at sea, the U.S. government made exceptions for Cubans, helping them “jump ahead” of other nationalities in the immigration line. Pedro Pans came with visa waivers. Those who entered via the chaotic boatlifts of Camarioca, Mariel or the “balseros” crisis had neither visas nor vetting – just like those entering through the southern border today. But the U.S. responded to these crises with compassion, establishing the Freedom Flights, granting them parole, and enshrining in law – the Cuban Adjustment Act – an expedited path to residency and citizenship just for them.

Why should the Pedro Pans of today be treated any differently? Are they not children, too? Do their desperate parents not love them just as much?

The governor called it “disgusting” to compare the children’s exodus of 60 years ago to the border crisis of today.

What’s truly “disgusting” is political rhetoric that makes enemies of men who even now cry like children at the memory of their journey.

At that, we all should be crying.

Ana Rodriguez-Soto is editor of the Miami edition of the Florida Catholic and La Voz Católica. Read her bio here.