via thefederalist:
“When Republican governors send 50 migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, it’s a humanitarian crisis. When 51 migrants who were encouraged to cross the border by Democrats die in the back of a truck, well, that’s a statistic.”
Plus:
In September of 2014, I found myself in a town hall meeting in Lexington, Nebraska — population 10,000. It’s a meat-packing town about three hours west of Omaha, and not what one would call a wealthy town. I was there on a campaign stop with Sen. Ben Sasse, and the people of Lexington were very concerned with one issue in particular: what to do about the 11 Central American kids the federal government had dropped off unannounced in Lexington the month prior, just before the start of school. There had been a rapid influx of unaccompanied minors crossing the border that summer, and the Obama administration just relocated many of them around the country in towns such as Lexington.
It bears repeating that these were children that needed taking care of. Whatever social services you think are needed to take care of regular migrants, this was a much bigger and more expensive issue for the town. Self-sufficiency wasn’t just a matter of finding them work — these kids had to be clothed, fed, educated, and generally looked after for years.
The townspeople were alternately irate about being put into this situation and genuinely concerned for the kids’ welfare, given the town’s limited resources. After listening to the townspeople plead for help, we got on the campaign bus and drove to the next stop. For all I know, those migrant kids are still in Lexington, and the community of Lexington is hardly unique. Hundreds, if not thousands, of American towns have had to rise to meet challenges as a result of the federal refugee resettlement.
Perhaps you can start to see why I was unimpressed with the residents of Martha’s Vineyard for harboring 50 migrants for two days before sending in the military to herd them off. And yet, because the DeSantis stunt — and there are valid objections to flinging migrants hither and yon to make a point — exposed a great deal of hypocrisy among Democrats, there is a campaign afoot to portray Martha’s Vineyard as a model of compassion for the way they treated these immigrants.
In my wildest dreams, I could not have made up CNN’s headline that was this unintentionally parodic and unflattering: “‘They enriched us.’ Migrants’ 44-hour visit leaves indelible mark on Martha’s Vineyard.”
Or take this gauzy Washington Post profile of a Bolivian immigrant-turned-Martha’s Vineyard real estate agent — please. (In case you’re wondering, the average home price on the island is over $1 million, so the commissions are decent.) The woman took a day or so off to help the migrants and gather supplies for them. Which is, I confess, admirable behavior. But it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the ongoing volunteer work being done in border towns such as El Paso, Del Rio, and Yuma, which likely see 50 or more new migrants every hour. And yet, those volunteers get little flattering national press coverage, let alone something as tone deaf as this.
Well, El Paso, Del Rio, and Yuma are Red State areas full of uncouth characters, whereas The Vineyard is very much Our Kind Dear.