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.