Argentine President Javier Milei issued a message this weekend welcoming New Yorkers seeking to flee Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s socialist agenda to move to his country, recalling the long immigrant-friendly history of the Argentine Republic.
Milei delivered the message while giving a speech on Sunday before attendees at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) retreat hosted by President Donald Trump’s Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago. The Argentine president made a brief visit to the United States to attend the event and the America Business Forum in Miami prior to his arrival at Mar-a-Lago; he then departed to attend the inauguration of President Rodrigo Paz in Bolivia before returning home.
Prior to his speech at CPAC, Milei had already indirectly addressed the mayoral election in New York City in his remarks to the America Business Forum, urging Americans to reject socialism and all forms of collectivism. Mayor-elect Mamdani won the election on Tuesday on a platform of dubious and expensive promises, including free public bus rides, the establishment of Venezuela-style government grocery stores, and the replacement of policing with a “Department of Community Safety” that “prevent[s] violence before it happens.”
Mamdani won against Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa, who received no meaningful support from state or federal Republicans, and Andrew Cuomo, the disgraced former New York governor best known for his role in the deaths of thousands of New Yorkers during the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic and his sundry sexual misconduct allegations. President Trump endorsed Cuomo shortly before the election, taking issue with Sliwa’s preferred choice of hat.
Rather than address Mamdani’s victory, Milei addressed New Yorkers directly, offering a refuge where the leaders are implementing alternatives to Mamdani’s proposals.
“I would like to dedicate these words especially to New Yorkers, who have taken the opposite route of the one that Argentina took and will now live under a communist government,” Milei said. “Know that if things get complicated, you will always be well received on our land if you seek to prosper.”
Milei noted that the Argentine constitution obligates its government to “promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty for us… and all the men of the world who want to — legally — live on Argentine soil.”
Argentina for centuries has maintained one of the world’s most lenient immigration systems, enabling the mass migration of Europeans, particularly Italians, to that country in the 1800s. Milei issued an executive order in May to significantly overhaul the Argentine immigration system, intended to limit government spending on social programs for migrants and make it more difficult for foreigners to become citizens. Even Milei’s “strict” reforms to immigration will allow foreigners to become citizens after living in Argentina for two years, however, and all legal residency but limit free access to government benefits.
Elsewhere in his remarks at CPAC, Milei offered “a call to New York” in English, shifting to Spanish to explain his alarm with the choice of “democratic socialism” by America’s largest city.
“When one takes the path of socialism, communism, or any other type of collectivism with another name, some call it now democratic socialism, first a moral harm is generated in society, under which is justified theft from some to benefit others,” Milei explained. “Then, when the fruit of their efforts is expropriated, sick of exploitation, they go to another jurisdiction where they are respected, and the economic damage begins due to the flight of capital.”
“Argentina took that path for the past 100 years and reached the brink of collapse. In 2023, it decided to change course radically and open itself up to freedom,” he noted.
Milei also celebrated his victory in this month’s Argentine midterm elections which dramatically expanded the power of his libertarian party, Liberty Advances, in Congress.
“In the most difficult moment, when all believed that our government was finished and the communists smacking their lips thinking of returning even worse, 41 percent of Argentines chose to ratify their trust in our path to liberty,” he declared, adding of his party’s philosophy: “We do not think that capitalism is morally correct because of the fact that it lifted over 90 percent of the global population out of poverty, but because it managed to lift them out of poverty precisely because it is the most moral model of all those existing.”
Milei concluded his speech by dancing to the Village People disco classic “YMCA,” now a staple of the Trump presidency.
Milei’s CPAC speech was a complimentary message to New York City residents that he had delivered on Thursday at the America Business Forum.
“Kirchnerism is no more or less than one of the branches of ‘Socialism of the 21st Century,’ which has entered some of the East Coast,” Milei noted. “Don’t let yourselves be intimidated by some local results.”
“Kirchnerism” is the modern form of leftist “Peronism” led by former Presidents Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, representing the mainstream left in Argentina.
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