Time for Floridians to become sunbirds and migrate north

  Frank Cerabino Palm Beach Post

Dear Canadian snowbirds: We need to talk. As an unofficial South Florida ambassador, I would like to begin negotiations for a reverse migration this winter. For decades now, we here in South Florida have opened our hands in friendship (and in your pockets) to welcome you for an extended respite from cold Canadian winters.

Every November, we have come to expect the sight of your packed vehicles, caked with a white layer of road salt, making their way south on I-95.

We have graciously accommodated this migration. OK, well maybe semi-graciously. The point is, we weren’t successful at running you off.

We have watched you loll on our shoreline like pale beached whales, get your fill at our all-you-can-eat buffets, and shower us with your gentle good nature, so gentle that it somehow becomes irritating.

Nevertheless, we’ve been good hosts on the whole — not counting the road rage, concealed handguns, widespread unchecked mental illness, and general lack of French speakers and poutine.

But alas, the paradigm has shifted. And now it is your turn to host us.

I know what you’re thinking. Why would anybody want to leave sunny South Florida in the winter and go to Canada?

Well, the short answer is: We’re desperate.

Nobody wants us anymore. And we really need to leave.

We’ve bungled the response to COVID-19 so badly that nearly all the world won’t allow American tourists to come there. I wouldn’t be surprised if Mexico takes over building the wall.

Sure, we could still go to Rwanda, Belarus and Haiti, but all the places we like to go are off limits now.

We’re being treated like infected pariahs. No American tourists allowed.

And I can’t blame these other countries. The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population but a quarter of the world’s COVID-19 cases.

Some say that’s because we’re doing a lot of testing, and all that testing results in more cases. But that doesn’t explain why we also have more than 22 percent of the world’s COVID19 deaths — the most deaths in the world. Or that in the 23 countries most affected by coronavirus, our deaths per- 100,000-population number here in the United States is the fourth highest in the world (behind the United Kingdom, Peru and Chile), according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.

We’re supposed to be the gold standard in care.

If only we could be more like you, Canada, with your healthcare- for-all and your COVID-19 death rate per- 100,000- people about half of ours.

It’s no wonder that you’ve joined other nations in the world to keep American tourists from entering your country for now.

But what’s going to happen in November? You’re probably not going to want to make your annual Florida trek, barring some miracle.

And by a miracle, I mean our leaders switching their focus from saving the college football season to saving school teachers’ and students’ lives by making instant-results COVID19 tests available to all schools.

Not likely. So here’s the plan.

We here in South Florida will come to you in Canada this winter. It will probably take some special legislative action by the Canadian Parliament to allow it.

You’ll need to make available a number of refugee visas for South Floridians between say, November and March.

It’s the least you can do to repay us for the winters we’ve hosted you as refugees from the cold.

Allowing us to be in Canada between November and March should get us out of the United States during the time the rest of America sorts out its accidental monarchy.

Our imaginary king, after losing by a resounding defeat, will refuse to relinquish his throne, and instead release America’s unregulated militias and Q-anon crazies to the streets, where they will meet their match in the U.S. military.

It will be ugly. Even uglier than a winter in Canada.

Meanwhile, we’ll put a few extra logs on the fire and do our best to be good house guests for you in Canada this winter.

We’ll shovel your driveways, learn to ice fish and play petanque, and earn points on our Tim Hortons reward cards. And you can teach us how to be kind and patient. (Good luck with that.) And then for the Winter of 2022, you can come back here to South Florida, and we’ll start resenting you again.

Waddya say? Deal?