1/13/2020 - Scott Morefield Townhall.com
Up
until last week, every GOP governor had either agreed to accept refugees or had
yet to say one way or another, that is until Texas Governor Greg Abbott made
his state the first to decline refugee resettlement, citing the
“disproportionate” impact on the border state thanks to the Federal
government’s “broken” immigration system and a “responsibility to dedicate
available resources to those who are already here, including refugees,
migrants, and the homeless.” Abbott’s decision predictably triggered the wrath
of America’s ‘woke police,’ who rival Iran’s morality police in their
hysterical zeal to impose their twisted definition of ‘virtue’ on the rest of
society.
Presidential
candidate Tom Steyer said
the decision was “inhumane and violates American values.”
“New,
and awful, update to this,” wrote
The Washington Post’s Catherine Rampell. “Despite the fact that mayors of
*every* major city in Texas have asked to continue receiving refugees, Texas
Gov. Greg Abbott (R) has now said they will be prevented from doing so.”
Columnist
Monica Rhor called it “shameful” and “morally wrong.”
RAICES
Texas, an immigration legal services group, wrote: “Prompted by xenophobia and fear, Gov. Abbott has
decided to close the door on our refugee sisters and brothers seeking home
& safety. There's absolutely no reason for this decision. Refugees &
immigrants make Texas better.”
The
Dallas Morning News claimed the state’s “reputation is tarnished now by opting
out of something as fundamental to our national character as welcoming those
fleeing war and persecution, as were those who founded this great country.”
“Shameful.”
“Violates American values.” “Morally wrong.” “Prompted by xenophobia and fear.”
Against our “national character.” These are all words and phrases used to
tarnish not just those who stand against resettling refugees, but also those
who oppose immigration in general. Critics accuse us of conflating refugee
resettlement and immigration - both legal and illegal - but in truth, they are
one and the same insofar as both, for the most part, represent the physical
presence of impoverished, often unskilled peoples from cultures that often
aren’t easily assimilable to ours. So from this point forward, I’m damn well
conflating them, on purpose.
Granted,
the idea that abortion & communist loving leftists are qualified to lecture
anyone on morals is laughable and beyond absurd, sort of like listening to
Adolf Hitler give a lecture about kindness to animals. But who really has the moral high ground here, immigration hawks or proponents of mass migration?
Consider:
When countries, particularly wealthy ones, open their borders to mass
migration, it inevitably creates a vacuum that draws millions, if not billions,
of the rest of the world’s population. It’s often a dangerous journey, and many
die on the way. Certainly, should they make it, their lives can be improved
from what they were. But, would the world truly be a better place if all who
would live somewhere else got their wish? What about those left twisting in the
wind in the countries migrants are fleeing from? Those too poor, too frail, too
tied down, or even too afraid to make the move? Assuming, as the left is prone
to do, that all or even most migrants are ‘good people,’ does it negatively
impact their countries of origin to lose so many ‘good people,’ people who,
were they to take positive action where God placed them, could make their own
country a better place?
In
truth, by creating a system whereby those strong enough, clever enough, or even
wealthy enough to move somewhere else are encouraged to do so, proponents of
mass immigration have actually caused the entire planet to become worse than it
previously would have been. Not only are destination countries negatively
impacted by the strain mass migration puts on social services, infrastructure,
and social fabric, but origin countries are losing a significant slice of their
best people, and thus face ever-declining prospects of a better life for those
truly stuck there.
For
us, what if the billion or so who would move if they could magically were
placed inside their preferred destinations - always the (hated?) West, of
course. What if North America and Europe were filled to the brim with upwards
of a billion people each? How would our own lives improve? Imagine sharing a
country with three times the current population? How long before North America
and Europe began to resemble the pathologies of the migrants’ countries of
origin?
Finally,
what of the poor, the downtrodden, and the often-ignored populations of our own
country? Why, for example, is Austin’s liberal mayor so hellbent on bringing in more refugees when the streets of his own city
are literally filled with homeless people? I’m not saying we turn our backs on those
in need in other countries. What I am saying, however, is that the true moral
course of action is not to encourage migration, but to find effective ways to
help them, and their countries, right where they are.
Some
immigration proponents will dismiss articles like this by downplaying the
numbers. “Things would never reach that point,” they will smugly say. “We can
take more than we are taking right now,” they will insist, because our “values”
depend on it, or something. Ask them for a number, when enough will be enough,
and they will rarely if ever give an answer.
In
an article titled “GOP governors who embrace refugees deserve
conservative support,” the Washington Examiner’s Brad Polumbo took umbrage at
the sentiments shared in my January 6 column accusing the GOP governors who asked for
refugee resettlement of betraying both President Trump and their constituents.
To me, they are “RINO squishes all too happy to put foreigners over the
citizens who elected them to office.” To Brad, they are “simply doing the right
thing to help people fleeing tyrants and terrorists abroad.”
Watch
how Polumbo ‘counters’ the anti-refugee argument by first downplaying the
current refugee numbers, then tips his hand by bemoaning - with a carefully
inserted “sadly” - the fact that the numbers are indeed low:
“First,
we’re not talking about a wave of millions of refugees pouring into the country
en masse … not even close,” he wrote. “The Trump administration has, sadly,
limited the number of refugees the United States can accept to just under
20,000. So, between the 17 Republican governors, not to mention all of their
Democratic counterparts, they’re simply agreeing to each take on what, less
than 1,000 refugees at most? This isn't a very intimidating ‘invasion.’ And
allowing a few thousand refugees, who aren’t even granted the right to vote, to
enter red states will hardly mean ‘America ceases to be America.’”
True,
20,000 refugees alone won’t do it. But if establishment ‘conservatives’ like
Cato Institute and leftist Democrats get their wish, a tipping point WILL
someday be reached. Because when you combine the refugee numbers, vetted and
screened though they may be, with the ‘tired and poor’ they would LIKE to bring
in via an immigration system overhaul, it won’t be all that long before
socialist-leaning voters vastly outnumber freedom-loving ones.
When
that happens, America truly “ceases to be America,” and there’s no going back.
No comments:
Post a Comment