Montana Viewpoint: ‘I pity the poor immigrant’

Jim Elliott

I’ve acquired handy it to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for sharing the wealth of the immigrant disaster with Massachusetts, I’m simply unsure what handy him.

A few weeks in the past, DeSantis had a few planeloads of asylum-seeking authorized immigrants from Venezuela shipped from a San Antonio, Texas immigrant shelter to unique Martha’s Vinyard island off the Massachusetts coast.

Border states like Texas and Arizona shouldn’t need to be the one ones to bear the prices of humanitarian support to immigrant households some, governors really feel, and so it’s applicable that they transport a portion of their unwelcome fees to liberal locales that profess sympathy for the immigrants. Serving to them to do their share, because it had been.

By the identical token in fact, I don’t know why Montana has to bear the total burden of twenty diploma under zero winters and need to be the primary to suggest sending a few of that climate south to Florida in chartered fleets of refrigerated vans.

DeSantis didn’t, as some have mentioned, use federal Covid cash to pay for the charters. He used the curiosity from the federal Covid cash, which is one way or the other totally different.

However again to the immigrants. DeSantis apparently had no obtainable Florida immigrants at his disposal so he went to a “Lease-an-Immigrant” outfit in San Antonio, Texas, to get some to fly to Florida so he may then export them to Massachusetts. I suppose there could also be some immigrants from Cuba in Florida since they’re leaving their socialistic island paradise in droves, however Cubans are a reasonably essential voting block in Florida, so it will appear DeSantis is exercising political warning.

No, the Texas immigrants he picked up in San Antonio had been of the Venezuelan selection, with no recognized political clout in Florida. Or in Venezuela, for that matter as a result of they’re fleeing Venezuela’s chaos at a fee exceeded solely by folks fleeing the Ukraine.

No less than one in all them made the journey via the Darien Hole, a lethal, treacherous, roadless jungle between Columbia and Panama. The Venezuelans had been approached by a lady named Perla who was employed by individuals unknown to recruit immigrants. She supplied them a shiny brochure about the advantages awaiting them in Massachusetts—these included jobs, housing and, I suppose, a welcome wagon basket—and requested if they want an all-expense paid journey there.

What did they need to lose, they could have requested themselves, since they’d misplaced all the things already. So, in keeping with the Miami Herald, planes had been chartered via an organization with ties to the DeSantis administration for some $614,000, and fifty keen immigrants had been dumped on the liberal island which was, in a phrase, sucker-punched with no advance discover of their alternative to do good works for immigrants.

Fortunately, the folks of Martha’s Vinyard did rise to the event, surprising because it was, and helped the immigrants with meals, clothes, beds, and authorized assist.

Effectively, no good deed goes unpunished, as they are saying, and whilst DeSantis was being cheered for his actions in Florida, he was being sued by the immigrants he had blind-sided, and the Sheriff of Bexar County, Texas – the place San Antonio is positioned – introduced he was starting an investigation as a result of the immigrants had been recruited underneath false pretenses.

This is able to have been a reasonably good political stunt if it hadn’t concerned folks. Or deception. Or dishonesty. The humanitarian hypocrisy of the liberal left is there for all to see within the restrictions of the place the homeless can and may’t pitch their tents in Portland and San Francisco, and the residents of those self same cities refusing to permit excessive density housing into their neighborhoods for worry of attracting undesirable components, which phrases we are able to translate as “poor.”

However the headline grabbing stunts of DeSantis and Abbott of Texas will not be makes an attempt to treatment a major problem, except getting votes is a major problem. Higher to work collectively to make issues higher, however that doesn’t seize headlines.

You will get quite a bit accomplished if you happen to don’t care who will get the credit score. Politicians ought to strive it generally.

Jim Elliott served sixteen years within the Montana Legislature as a state consultant and state senator. He lives on his ranch in Trout Creek.