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Sep 19, 2022·edited Sep 19, 2022

DeSantis's move was a blatant political stunt designed to own the libs and nothing more. He didn't even pull immigrants off the streets of Florida, but instead spent Floridians' tax dollars on using false promises to induce immigrants from Texas to hop on a chartered plane to Massachusetts.

Yes, immigration is a problem in this country. However, the most recent attempt at bipartisan reform was tanked by GOP hardliners in the House after it passed in the Senate because they didn't want to hand Obama a big victory or deprive themselves of potent wedge issue. The GOP has been driving our politics into the gutter for a while now. Trump elevated what was a already strong tendency into an art form. As Adam Serwer so aptly observed, the cruelty is the point. DeSantis reinforced it.

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Another escalation of the Cold Uncivil War.

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The thing that should be discussed more on the right is how well this played to and was received by the white evangelical crowd. The cruelty is the point. As a member of that crowd I’m dismayed yet again.

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Well said.

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In my mind, it's only cruelty if one acts against the interests of every major institution in this country, all of which have taken a position in favor of open borders.

Here is my overarching point: It is pointless for conservatives to agree with any liberal, ever, on what behavior is acceptable. Mr. DeSantis got an appropriation to let liberal sanctuary areas have a go at helping deal with this problem. (I will bet that MV is a sanctuary town/city.) Bussing and flying the immigrants is one way to show the whole sanctuary policies of these urban areas are indeed merely performative liberalism.

To paraphrase Victor Davis Hanson: The only real function of liberal policy making is to enforce laws, rules, mandates on others that the liberals themselves do not have suffer under.

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And that is politics. For over 75 years the Republican Party has been gulled into thinking that liberals are honest brokers, that any compromise is an honest attempt to solve any problem. That isn't true, and there should be in the words of Mrs. Shlafly "A Choice, Not an Echo".

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Sep 19, 2022·edited Sep 19, 2022

I’m probably the only Latina immigrant posting here. And this article has made me really angry and nauseated. (I apologize for the stream of consciousness rant below).

I’m a registered Democrat. I worked for the Democratic Party briefly after law school. I have voted for every Democrat president. I cannot be called “conservative” nor “Republican”. I had my own pro bono law practice in West Harlem, instead of joining a “white shoe” law firm. I cannot be called “unfeeling”.

And it turns my stomach to see all these White liberals moaning about DeSantis and his “cruel” tactics.

Well, I could not care less what tactics are used by what politician, as long as this issue of unceasing migrants is addressed. We are drowning here in NYC, in the Bronx, Queens and upper Manhattan! Relatives in Florida are overwhelmed. Friends and family in L.A. are feeling the same. And, Texas, well forget about Latinos at the border voting for Democrats again anytime soon.

Our schools are cramped. Our hospital emergency rooms are dangerous. And worst of all, our younger relatives now have to compete for housing, even more than before! My best friend’s son was planning a wedding and looking for an apartment in the Bronx. Well, that is not gonna happen now. There are too many migrants all over, competing, seeking to rent the same apartments in groups, through “sponsors” (“kind” White peoples who cluelessly don’t realize how they’re hurting the rest of us). There will be thousands upon thousands of more homeless; a recession is coming, with inevitable unemployment for the lower rungs, and these people will be competing for jobs with those already legally here, and keeping wages lower than they should be.

How is this not a huge American tragedy? A tragedy for legal, voting, poor Americans…Just because Biden decided to stop the “remain in Mexico” & all he rest of Mayorkas’ careless stupidities.

Yes, I do want all of you White people to stop talking. Stop with your “oh this is horrible” b.s. (By the way, all the migrants I’ve spoken to are very happy to have been shipped/bussed out of the border. No one is complaining except the ones who have been picked off by ambulance chasers for a claim of “kidnapping” — good luck with that case, boys, it’s an expensive stinker; no jury with one Latino in it will find in your favor, and the cases will not be settled).

And I cannot even begin to express the immense anger and sense of betrayal being felt by all my pro-bono immigration clients who have legally-petitioned for relatives & have been waiting for years — and now they have to see migrants who have not gone through the system legally — jumping the line! And being feted and given all sorts of things! Do you folks even realize how the Dems are losing a generation of legal Latino votes with this open border, “let us welcome them” b.s.?!

So yeah, White people: Until your neighborhoods, schools, and hospitals are swamped, and you take a family into your home, and ask Biden to stop this — I ask you to please shut up.

How dare you weep for migrants online and do nothing of substance off line? How dare you criticize those who are trying to call attention to this desperate situation — a situation no one here wrote about until the “DeSantis stunt”…?

Well, we who are suffering due to this mass migration are grateful for DeSantis. Even us Democrats.

How about you all shut up until you do something substantive? Like asking Biden to close the border. Keep them in Mexico until petition approval, after severely tightening asylum claims.

Anything else is simply hurting Americans. Hurting people who actually vote and pay taxes here in America. We will not see another Democrat president while this is going on at the border.

Please, think of us Americans suffering under this onslaught, before you weep for people from other countries.

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Or maybe inaction is the compromise position. We are a republic, not a democracy. Where I live 90% of the people voted for the GOP. I feel exactly zero need to conform to any requirements imposed by people who I don't know and, further, people I do not respect.

In my field, all the problems have come from liberals and leftists. I do not consider liberals as worthy of any type of political cover for the choices they have imposed on me.

Politics is about debate and decision. It is also about hanging the problems caused by any change around the necks of those who caused the change, and holding liberals responsible for the messes they cause.

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That the immigrants were well-treated is beside the point because that was out of the DeSantists' hands, and it's easy (at least for me) to guess that the devout hope was that they would not be well-treated once they'd arrived.

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Oh, Dear! Those intolerable ruffians in the provinces are misbehaving again! Who do these Republican semi-fascists think they are? American citizens who think US immigration law should be enforced, just as it every time someone steps off an international flight into a US airport? For every cynical demagogue, there is an unsolved problem that makes people turn him into their leader. Do you know what happens when the 2 millionth illegal immigrant since Biden took office is told at the US border, "You're free to go. See you in 3 years if you show up for your hearing." For the most part, it's out of sight, and out of mind, except for the local community they're released into. Go talk to Hispanics in El Paso if you think this is just about white Trumpers. I doubt if DeSantis's stunt had the support of anyone who isn't part of the Republican base, but it certainly got your attention and Harvard law professors who say that the DOJ should indict DeSantis for kidnapping and human trafficking, ignoring real victims of real human trafficking making it through our porous border all the time. But I digress. The real news today according to our laser-focused president is that inflation and the pandemic are over, and we will go to war with China if it invades Taiwan.

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You are 100% correct. Besides the fact that Florida has no border with Mexico and can stop boat loads of migrants from entering its shores. Besides the fact that they welcome Cuban immigrants wholeheartedly, even though they are also Hispanics and/or Latino. It had to be a political stunt and it blew up in his face when the residents of Martha's Vinyard helped these people. Did he expect them to be shot or jailed?

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