ORLANDO jair bolsonaro ended Dec. On January 31 in Brazil, she headed to a resort community near Orlando in the shadow of Walt Disney World.
There, he has been seen at a local Publix supermarket, dining at local restaurants, and being greeted by enthusiastic local Brazilian fans. Whether because of the support of the locals or for political reasons, only Bolsonaro himself knows for sure why he ended up there.
What is clearer is why nearly 130,000 Brazilians live in Florida, according to the US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.
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While their individual paths to the US differ, immigrants’ reasons for leaving Brazil are similar: personal security, a better financial situation, and a lack of hope that their home country will one day offer the opportunities they find. here.
Brazil has been in crisis since thousands of Bolsonaro supporters they stormed the congress and the presidential palace on Sunday. The right-wing former president, who lost by a narrow margin, has said that the elections were fraudulent and he arrived in Florida without attending the inauguration of the left-wing president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, his opponent.
Hope for more security, quality of life.
Jorge Paiva, who has lived in Orlando for 10 years with his wife, Alessandra, and their 17-year-old son, Guilherme, said that one of the main factors that influenced his decision to leave was the lack of security that lives in São Paulo, the most populous city.
“We had an episode when we were robbed in front of our condominium,” said Jorge Paiva.
The constant fear of what could happen next, without the prospect of when things could improve, made the couple think especially about their son’s safety and quality of life. Giving your son a 1 a.m. curfew after a night out with friends is much easier to do here than in Brazil, she said.
“If we were in Brazil, I wouldn’t be able to go to sleep in peace,” he said.
according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimethere was an average of 22 intentional homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in Brazil in 2022. In the United States, the average was 7 intentional homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in the same period.
Like many Brazilian families, Paiva said her family used to come to Orlando on vacation. But the experience of starting a new life is completely different from being a tourist.
“I used to work for a very good company in Brazil, an American company, a very good position,” Jorge Paiva said. “But I ended up giving that up not just for (him and his wife) but for Gui (his son), to give him better security, more opportunities.”
He said that while life in the US presents its own challenges, such as access to health care, taxpayer dollars are spent much more effectively.
“What the government says about what it will do with taxes is actually done,” said Alessandra Paiva. “You see that money is being spent in the right and necessary areas.”
The couple also mentioned how free public education (middle and high school) is another big plus for their son’s future and their own financial situation. Private schools in Brazil are expensive, and while public schools are free, they often do not offer as good a structure for students.
He acknowledged that while Bolsonaro is in fact more popular with Brazilians living in the area, Brazilian politics may be just one factor among several, sometimes larger ones, that play a role in someone’s decision to leave the country.
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“The question is not only the support (for Bolsonaro), nobody agrees 100% with what this or that politician does,” said Jorge Paiva. “But Lula’s rejection rate is higher than Bolsonaro’s.”
Lula began his third term as Brazil’s president after defeating Bolsonaro by 50.9% to 49.1%. Bolsonaro was elected in 2018, while Lula was first elected in 2002 and re-elected in 2006.
Lula and his political party, the PT (“Partido dos Trabalhadores,” or Workers’ Party), have represented left-wing politics in the South American country for decades, while Bolsonaro has moved among the right-wing parties (there are several major matches). political parties in Brazil, unlike in the United States), especially during his presidency.
lula was arrested in 2018 because of a corruption scandal and was unable to run for the presidency against Bolsonaro, as he intended. In 2019, the Brazilian Supreme Court overturned his convictions, alleging that the judge was biased and colluded with prosecutors.
financial perspective
Milena Simões and her husband, Rodrigo, have been in the United States for six years. She said that while her husband’s business (a mozzarella cheese manufacturing company) in Brazil has been successful, quality of life in the country of origin cannot be bought.
“What made him decide to apply for a permanent visa for us was the extra time we could spend with the kids, the quality of life we could have, and frankly being able to enjoy what you fought for. your whole life,” Simões said.
She said that while the opportunity to give her children the experience of living in another country and learning a new language was a factor, the main motivation for leaving Brazil was to find a better and safer place to live.
“It’s sad to work all your life, to be able to achieve a level of financial success and not be able to enjoy it,” he added. “In Brazil I have a bulletproof car, which I still have, I have a whole structure in Brazil for when I return.”
He said that with Lula’s victory, they believe the company could be affected by the new government’s policies and are trying to find a way to earn their income in dollars. The exchange rate of the dollar to the real (Brazilian currency) is currently from $1 to 5.16 reais.
“We don’t know now how much the dollar is going to cost (during Lula’s administration),” he added.
The decision to move was ‘now or never’
Luiz Rafael Piedade moved to Winter Garden, Florida, from São Paulo just over a year ago with his wife, Carol, and their three children.
He grew up in the interior of the Brazilian state, in the city of Itapetininga, where the quieter and greener lifestyle is different from the hustle, traffic and pollution of São Paulo.
Although they had been living in a safer area closer to the city of São Paulo, where there is better security, “nothing compares to what we have in this country,” Piedade said of the US.
“There are problems here, of course,” he said. “But sometimes I forget to close the garage door or the door of my house; I can let my kids go to the nearby Starbucks on their scooters, things I could never imagine doing in Brazil today.”
A lawyer in Brazil, he has been able to work remotely in the US, which has cut his work time almost in half, giving him more time to spend with his family.
“Combining better security, the ability to work remotely, my son’s desire to go to school here, we decided it was time to move,” he said. “We said, ‘It’s now or never.'”
Piedade said he believes that the political division in Brazil between the right and the left has prevailed since before Bolsonaro emerged as a prominent political figure: that right-wing Brazilians see Bolsonaro simply as the opposition, where other right-wing politicians who it was opposed by the presidents of the Workers’ Party, Lula from 2002 to 2010, and Dilma Rousseff from 2011 to 2016 (Rousseff was impeached in 2016, halfway through her second term).
“The Brazilian right is not against a leftist candidate,” Piedade said. “They are against a candidate who has been arrested to participate in a presidential election.”
