Charlie Baker has now rescinded his offer of a couple of helicopters to assist in Donald Trump’s/Stephen Miller’s torment of immigrants and asylum seekers. The Boston Globe refers to his “change of heart” after hearing of the tearing away of children from their mommies and daddies. How inspiring! Like the Grinch, doubtless his heart grew three sizes that day.
Nonsense. The thing that brought Charlie Baker to cancel the helicopters-to-Trump lend-lease was sheer political pressure and shaming. That he ever approved it in the first place was a moral scandal. He knows that the internet has blown up over this. Even though Baker exhibits scant introspection himself on this, he knows that we recognize the pure evil and sadism at the heart of Trump’s immigration regime.
Baker’s initial decision to send the helicopters was morally obtuse. But this fits a pattern: As we’ve been saying, Baker has been using immigrants as a political punching bag and literal applause line since he took office. He heartlessly resisted taking in Syrian refugees (with the craven assistance of Mayor Walsh); he introduced legislation that would have allowed cops to hold on to people otherwise free to go, to give ICE a shot at them; he consistently tries to restrict eligibility for health benefits to immigrants — and so on. (Why is it good to have people go without health care?).
Xenophobia and racism are the animating principles of the Republican Party today. (As the kids say, don’t @ me; it is obvious as the sun rising in the east.) Charlie Baker polishes the fruit of the poison tree and gives it a wonky, “moderate” shine, hoping that his right flank still recognizes it as tempting.
What is courageous leadership in the face of inhuman police action against the most vulnerable? Let’s remember Deval Patrick’s actions after the New Beford raid in 2007:
Amid the cascade of sickening headlines about the inhumane treatment of immigrant families at our borders, my mind keeps coming back to this moment & these words, in 2014 when @DevalPatrick stood up as one of only a few Governors willing to shelter undocumented children in MA. pic.twitter.com/8poNfFT78B
— Alex Goldstein (@alexjgoldstein) May 26, 2018
It was not politically easy. But morally, it was clearly, bracingly right. It was leadership, and I’d hold that Governor Patrick helped mold an ideological consensus in Massachusetts that we still share, and to which Governor Baker has mostly acceded.
Baker, too, has a bully pulpit; his decision to withhold the helicopters was inconveniently mentioned to Sarah Huckabee Sanders just today. People notice. He could be a leader. He has a role to play, but he won’t take the stage. This is the fellow who didn’t recognize himself when he ran for governor in 2010, so maybe he’s just lost himself to ambition, again. Maybe.
But I do believe in repentance, and redemption. I believe in “hero moments.” People change their minds. Charlie Baker can fix this. He can pledge to sign the Safe Communities Act, which, stopping short of making Massachusetts a “sanctuary state”, will simply prevent police resources in Massachusetts from acting as ICE proxies:
- Focuses resources on local needs, not deportation
State and local police should use their limited resources to fight crime, not immigrant community members and their families. The bill would bar police from arresting or detaining a person solely for federal immigration enforcement purposes, or participating in U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) investigations or raids based solely on immigration status. It would also prohibit agreements to deputize state and local officers as federal immigration agents, co-opting and taking away resources from local communities. When police act as ICE agents, victims and witnesses of crime are afraid to call for help, which makes us all less safe.*
You can do it, Governor. You’ll have to be willing to disappoint those folks who cheered you at the MassGOP convention. But this is a moment where you can’t straddle; you’ve got to choose. Ya gotta have heart — all the time.
We can’t let them all in.
What a ghoulish excuse for cruelty. Well done – the mask is off.
Why not? If I got to make immigration policy it would boil down to “y’all come” unless the specific individual is deemed a threat to public health or public safety.
Alliance of cheap labor Republicans and cheap vote Democrats let them all in. Now you’re getting pushback. Same thing is happening in Europe where everybody is so enlightened.
Anyone can see it’s a policy approach that will blow itself up.
It’s simply the right thing to do, especially for a country such as ours built and sustained by the very premise that anybody can come and pursue political liberty and economic opportunity. “Give us your tired, your poor, etc.” Plus labor should not be cheap. I for one support a $15/hour minimum wage and immunity to any immigrant who reports their employer for violations. If one side is being welcoming and the other not of course they will vote for the former. I’d prefer both sides be welcoming and let their votes be up for grabs.
I agree with your general direction, I just don’t think you’re getting there this way.
What do you mean “we”?
Yes. We can. Prior to the 1920’s and the Klan fueled immigration laws, we did. It is estimated that 100 million American citizens, greater than ONE THIRD of the present US population, can trace their families path to America through Ellis Island, which was but the largest of several immigrant inspection sites. The number of people we simply let walk through in one year, 1907, with a fee and a medical inspection DWARFS the number of refugees you don’t want to take over the entirety of the last two decades.
The frontier is closed now. No comparison.
I would ask you to, please, demonstrate for all the class to see the relationship between any such frontier closure and the implementation of harsher and more restrictive immigration policies. (By far, the largest cohort of immigrants settled in cities…) But I’m not entirely certain you’ll recognize that there is no such relationship and, therefore, charge ahead, somehow ending up blaming the Jews for the the slaughter of Native Americans
That’s what happens when you got your head so far up your own ass you can read your own entrails…
You answered your own question. The 1920s immigration restrictions were the best thing to happen to those city-dwelling immigrants who came in the wave before. If that wave could have bought land and farms as cheap as they were during the frontier times, they would have done so. The restriction gave them a chance to assimilate and be absorbed into capitalist America. The 1965 loosening of the immigration restrictions began a period of income stagnation that has lasted up to the present.
So one generation got theirs and too bad for the next? Sorry, no sale.
Pre 1920s immigrants voted for Nixon in 1968. Aren’t you trying to establish a treadmill of continuous immigration that will perpetually undermine the success of the previous generations? How are you different from the globalists seeking ever cheaper labor around the world?
I do want this country to be perpetually open to new immigrants, but reject in the strongest possible terms your premise of competing generations. We also need strong labor protections for all people whether new immigrants, Mayflower-descended, or anything in between.
Even if that were true, perhaps we could turn them away WITHOUT TEARING THEIR CHILDREN AWAY FROM THEM.
If you say anybody bringing a kid gets in, everybody picks up a kid. That’s why we have this situation.
I’m not saying everyone who brings a kid gets in. I’m saying KEEP THE FUCKING KIDS WITH THEIR PARENTS.
Keep the parents out — keep the kids with them. Let the parents in — keep the kids with them. I don’t give two hot shits about what your opinion is on whether they should stay in the country or not. This is not about whether they can stay. This is about the US KEEPING CHILDREN IN GODDAMN CAGES away from their parents indefinitely.
“We can’t just let them stay” is NOT a response. You can do whatever WITHOUT breaking up families
How do you know it’s their kid?
Because the kid is reaching toward a particular woman and crying for mommy? What does it matter and why are you looking for every excuse to keep them out? Your xenophobia is completely out of line.
Are you ok with detaining mommy and the kid together?
No, I’d much rather process them post haste and let them settle together.
America used to stand for something. Today, because 45K people over three large states drank Trump’s Kool-Aid, we have become jack-booted thugs in the eyes of 3-year-old kids — and the rest of the civilized world. Shame on us for letting this happen to what Lincoln called “the last best hope of earth.” And shame on Charlie Baker for checking the political winds before doing what was right. We can do better, and it begins with removing Charlie and his brand of situational ethics from the corner office and our sight.
Why do you want people to agree with you? Maybe these Americans have had different experiences from you. They’re still Americans, you’re going to have to live with them so you might as well find a way to communicate.
How many immigration detention sites, for adults or children, in MA? I know there was a demo in Burlington over the past weekend about immigration at a site there and here that Suffolk County Jail is another detention site. There should be demonstrations at every such site every day until the policy of separating children from their families stops.
I was at one meeting on Sunday that had nothing to do with immigration but one speaker made it a point to mention the children being taken from their parents and urging us all to mention this at every public meeting, no matter the topic. I was at another meeting today and one of the speakers mentioned the children being taken from their parents, a speaker who had not been at Sunday’s meeting. Looks like this is happening spontaneously but I thought I’d make it explicit: mention the children forcibly separated from their parents by ICE at every public meeting. It may very well make a difference.
One of the main reasons we have so many coming to the US is our foreign policy where we try to fix the world .
In 1996, President Bill Clinton signed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility law, which made it far easier for the government to deport people convicted of certain crimes, including relatively minor ones and crimes committed by lawful permanent residents. Many of
the people we deported became gang members who could easily sneak back into the US and use their criminal connections to smuggle drugs, people, etc back into the US. Many were deported multiple times, essentially the government helped cut down on their commuting costs.
Before that Reagan picked sides in various Central American countries and the US helped create war torn scenarios in Nicaruaga, El Salvador, etc. Our interventions helped create the trans-national gangs like MS 13 and now we owe the Central Americans help in dealing with the hoodlums we were instrumental in creating.
Isolate and stay out of other countries business. Build a wall and control who comes in and out. Don’t deport MS13 back to create more headaches in El Salvador. Get something out of our UN membership. Try, convict and incarcerate gang members like they were war criminals (the UN has a detention facility for criminals of the Rwandan genocide). They are not US citizens so I have no problem handing them over to the UN to deal with, I’m sure the countries in Central America won’t care either. What to charge them with? Create something. International RICO?
If they feel safer in their own country there won’t be so many innocent families risking their life to get here.