To hear a panicked Gov. Nathan Deal describe it last week, you’d think the federal government was sending unaccompanied al Qaida terrorists to Georgia, rather than unaccompanied children.
“This came as a complete shock to me as the governor of this state,” Deal wrote in a letter of protest to President Barack Obama. “I’m sure it will also shock the local communities around the state where these individuals currently reside.”
The governor was angry because over a six-month period, “these individuals” — 1,156 refugee children from Central America — have been housed temporarily in Georgia while they await legal action on their cases. That would be fewer than 200 children a month, having to be absorbed somehow in a state of 10 million people. If we’re going to run about, hands fluttering in the air, proclaiming how shocked we are by all this, I suppose we should also be shocked that such a massive influx of dangerous outsiders could be smuggled into our midst without our own governor noticing.
In his letter, Deal also claimed that “Our hearts and sympathy go out to the children who are the victims of this humanitarian crisis.” That’s just not true. If our hearts went out to these children, many of whom are fleeing terrible gang violence in their home countries of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, we wouldn’t hesitate to help them. Instead, Deal makes it clear that he does not want “these individuals” in Georgia, and that any impact on taxes, schools or Medicaid is “unacceptable.” His entire letter reads as a rejection of their presence.
So please, spare us this “hearts and sympathy” rhetoric, followed by demands that those children be sent immediately back into those hellholes without even a consideration of their predicament. By that standard, I suppose the Jewish refugees that America refused to accept and sent back to Germany prior to World War II also had our “hearts and sympathy.”
Deal’s letter has to be viewed in the context of a Republican Party that is still afraid to confront the overall immigration challenge facing this country. Its current excuse for inaction in the U.S. House is its demand that border security be tightened. Yet here’s the offer sitting on the table, in a bipartisan bill already approved by the Senate:
— Doubling the size of the Border Patrol, from 19,000 to 38,000 agents.
— More than 700 miles of additional fencing along the border.
— Mandating 24-hour surveillance — watch towers, cameras, sensors, drones, helicopters — of the entire border, with $46.3 billion in initial funding.
— Another $750 million on the E-Verify program, and once that program is fully operational, a mandate that employers use it to ensure that every person they hire is legally entitled to work here.
All of that and much more in the area of enforcement is available the moment the House agrees to the bill. But the House refuses to even consider it. As House Speaker John Boehner has publicly confessed, his members think it’s just too hard to take such a vote.
It’s too hard to take action, and too easy to write letters proclaiming shock that we as a nation might actually be decent to children who have shown up at our doorstep frightened, destitute and hungry.
