Republicans starting to show true colors
“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free… …except when I’m a Republican running for president”
Inscription on the Statue of Liberty. (I added the second part)
In 1883, when Emma Lazarus penned her stirring poem that’s on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, she didn’t envision a group of Americans who’d openly refute those words.
Republicans are doing it now.
Donald Trump has used his malevolence toward immigrants as the centerpiece of his presidential campaign.
He frequently brags that nobody would be talking about the nation’s immigration problems if he hadn’t brought them up.
He’s wrong.
Immigration and immigration reform have been talked about during most recent presidential election cycles.
They’ve just not been advanced with such vicious fever as he’s given them.
The constant bickering over Trump’s promise to send millions of undocumented aliens packing, has been interrupted by those tragic events on Paris streets.
That gave Republican presidential candidates an opportunity to out tough-talk each other on the subject of Syrian refugees.
None of them seems to care that the longtime symbol of freedom that stands proudly in New York Harbor, is being discounted when votes can be had.
Despite some evidence that one of the terrorists who attacked Paris could have been a Syrian refugee, there’s little evidence that millions of other Syrian refugees want anything other than the freedoms that we now enjoy.
Lady Liberty says, “Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”
Donald Trump asks, “So what?”
Donald Trump says, “Refugees are pouring into our great country from Syria. We don’t even know who they are. They could be ISIS. They could be anybody.”
Of course, like most things that require a grain of truth, Trump goes full speed ahead.
First, there aren’t Syrians “pouring into our great country.”
Only 2,000 have found refuge in the United States over the past four years.
“So we have a president that wants to take hundreds of thousands of people and move them into the country,” Trump adds.
Not so.
President Obama has announced that only 10,000 Syrian refugees will be allowed to come into the country initially.
Dr. Ben Carson, no foreign policy heavyweight himself, claims, “There is currently no ability to vet these people. By letting refugees into our country without vetting we are putting America at risk.”
Nope.
Putting America at risk, would most likely happen if Dr. Carson wins the electoral college. But that’s another matter.
But let’s look at the vetting process.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, along with the U.S. embassy, determine which 1 percent of the refugees have a chance to be resettled in the U.S.
The entire process for refugees other than Syrians could take as long as a year and a half. For Syrian refugees, it could take an average of two years.
So much for the widespread Republican rhetoric about them flooding into the country.
Tough guy Chris Christie wants us to be afraid of the littlest Syrians.
“I don’t think orphans under five are being, you know, you should be admitted into the United States at this point,” says Christie.
What’re they going to attack us with, a crayon?
The two presidential candidate sons of refugees, Sen. Ted Cruz and Sen. Marco Rubio are both dead set against bringing Syrian refugees to this country.
In fact, Cruz claims he’s vowed to introduce legislation that would prevent Syrian Muslims from coming here.
He, like Jeb Bush, also wants to filter out the Muslims from the Syrians. They don’t understand that such religious zealotry is what those Syrians are fleeing.
There’s an ordained minister who just happens to be a presidential candidate. Mike Huckabee is playing the “cold” card.
Huckabee claims he’s had a friend call up and claim that it’s 130 degrees in Syria, and “now they want to send them up to Minnesota where it’s 30 degrees.”
I’m sure they won’t mind the cold.
I’d warn them to steer clear of Republicans, though.
Edward A. Owens is a three-time Emmy Award winner and 20-year veteran of television news. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net