Since it’s apparently a traumatizing life event to be given a free flight to Martha’s Vineyard — you know, the same place where the Obamas are suffering — every critic in the news media should be required to spell out exactly what the appropriate care should be for the millions of illegal immigrants dumping themselves into American taxpayer care.
Sending Latin America’s destitute back home is never an option to The New York Times and The Washington Post, so can they tell us what’s acceptable? Where should they all go? How should they get there? Who should take care of them?
They never say. Instead, people like Catherine Rampell of the Post can only sob about the great abuse endured by migrants bussed by Republican governors to what should be highly accommodating destinations: D.C., California, New York, and other “no human being is illegal” corners of the country.
“There have been many putative defenses of this stunt,” wrote Rampell on Monday, referring to Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis flying about 50 illegals into Martha’s Vineyard last week. “But in the end the only plausible explanation is performative cruelty. Right-wing presidential hopefuls have been trying to build up their national profiles through Trump-style schadenfreude, and eventually pave their own paths to the White House on the backs of vulnerable immigrants.”
There’s another question the Rampells should be made to account for. Wherein lies the “cruelty” of moving migrants from one location — where they’ve arrived at the border — to another? They have to go somewhere. What better place than the cities and states with leaders that have been most vocal about everyone south of the border having a divine right to be here? The benefits in those locations must surely be more generous than what’s offered in Texas, Arizona, and Florida.
In any event, this is something that the federal government does with unaccompanied minors who come across the border all the time. They’re sent from one detention center to another, while American tax dollars are spent figuring out what to do with them all.
I guess it’s only “cruelty” when a popular Republican governor who will probably run for president does it.
There’s also the insufferable “this is human trafficking!” complaint that leftists have yet to explain in any coherent way. There is the most dubious allegation that DeSantis got the hapless migrants on his plane by lying to them about some goodies awaiting them at the final destination — namely, financial assistance and jobs. Except Massachusetts has state programs explicitly promising refugees and migrants those very things. Did they run out the second that 50 Venezuelans showed up last week?
Finally, there’s the whiners of the Ken Burns variety who resent the “punishment” inflicted by DeSantis. They say the immigrant shuffle was a form of retribution against the governor’s political opponents. Setting aside that it’s the Biden administration, House Democrats, and Democrat state attorneys who are at this very moment legally prosecuting their political enemies, Burns and Co. should be forced to articulate the harm they’re enduring by having to care for the people they’ve encouraged to come and invited to stay.
These are questions they can sincerely answer. Every explanation would end up sounding awfully close to “we don’t want the responsibility of caring for poor brown people.”