The DeSantis Martha's Vineyard stunt was still very dumb

There's a lot of revisionism going on right now

Late last year, an agent of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis recruited several dozen “migrants,” illegal immigrants from Venezuela claiming dubious refugee status, from El Paso to fly to Martha’s Vineyard. A plane was chartered and the illegals were dropped off at the airport with packets containing maps to nearby charities and instructions on how to apply for government assistance.

The incident sparked outrage and glee across the country. Local officials said they didn’t have the resources to deal with all the illegals, who were dropped off without notice. Conservatives claimed it illustrated the hypocrisy of liberals: although they were fine with illegal immigrants in the abstract, they had a big problem with them when they were actually in their neighborhoods.

The issue with the later statement is that that just wasn’t true. The liberals did not have a problem with the illegal immigrants, in fact, they welcomed them with open arms. Their issue, as they always maintained, is that they just didn’t have the money and manpower to take care of the illegals adequately.

But they found the money and manpower soon. Local charities gave the illegals pre-paid cell phones and Visa gift cards. Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker activated the National Guard and the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency (MEMA) stepped in to provide the illegals with food, shelter, and legal services. The illegals were moved to a nearby military base before social workers distributed them throughout the already very large immigrant communities in Massachusetts.

The illegals are not going anywhere. Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar, a far-left public official in Texas whose jurisdiction extends over the area the illegals were recruited from, certified that the illegals were victims of a crime because of the flight. This certification qualifies the illegals for special “U-visas” for crime victims or other people who cooperate with law enforcement. These visas last for at least four years and allow recipients to work legally. Furthermore, they’re been released on “humanitarian parole” pending hearings on their refugee status and might be granted permanent asylum.

Rather than harm the illegals, these flights seem to have benefited them substantially. The illegals have filed a class action lawsuit against DeSantis, claiming they were fraudulently induced to travel to Martha’s Vineyard. Sherriff Salazar has launched a criminal investigation of the DeSantis employees involved in the scheme. California Governor Gavin Newsom has suggested filing bogus kidnapping charges (the legal definition of kidnapping being much broader than most would believe) against DeSantis for a more recent flight of several dozen illegals into Sacramento.

At this point, it’s important to qualify the parallel effort underway by Texas Governor Greg Abbott. Abbott has bussed over 21,000 illegals from his state to various “sanctuary city” jurisdictions around the country. Texas has certainly borne the brunt of President Biden’s disastrous immigration policies. There have been more than 3 million illegals released into the country just since he took office. Worse, there’s been a dramatic loosening of asylum requirements that allow virtually anyone to be granted asylum and therefore legal status in the country. Illegals are provided free flights to their final destination and released to do whatever they like. No one should have any illusions that this is anything other than open borders.

The Texas policy is more understandable than DeSantis’s stunts. These people are just loafing around Texas and cause enormous problems for the communities they reside in. Getting them out of Texas indisputably helps Texas citizens. It also greatly inconveniences liberal cities, and I’ll cover that in a little bit, though it’s important to note that there is a limitation to how far this inconvenience goes.

DeSantis’s flights, in contrast, were a transparent political stunt to benefit DeSantis’s failed primary campaign. He transported about 100 illegals in total. All of them disappeared into the broader immigrant community immediately. There were some inconveniences associated with their sudden and unexpected arrivals, but these were resolved extremely quickly. DeSantis spent about $600,000 dollars to get good headlines for himself. The illegals he transported weren’t even located in his state.

Regarding the problems presented by the Abbott bussing, they’re certainly generating a lot of complaints from liberals. However, these complaints do not extend to the broader topic of immigration. Instead, they’re asking for more resources and faster legal status for the illegals.

There’s this misconception that liberals calling in the National Guard means they’re panicking or on the brink of disaster or whatever. What does declaring a State of Emergency mean in practice? Giving the illegals free things and appealing to the federal government for more money. Last month, a large shelter in Boston was awarded a $2 million grant by FEMA. The city of New York has received at least $150 million from the Feds this year for their role in the migrant crisis. Who knows how many similar grants are being made across the country now? Money that should be going to disaster relief is now being used to support the ongoing invasion of the US.

Although states certainly might feel the heat from paying for illegal immigrants out of their own budgets, it’s ultimately not their money that they’re spending. These are activist public officials who support open borders. There is not a point they will reach where they’ve just spent too much of other people’s money. They might have limited complaints, it might cause local disruptions, but they will never substantively push for an end to Biden’s open border policies. At most, they’ll ask for more money, have the illegals moved elsewhere, and try to find excuses to throw conservative officials in jail.

Merely illustrating their hypocrisy has no real purpose. They do not care about their hypocrisies. They are shameless. They would not be doing this stuff if they weren’t shameless. Does anyone, regardless of political affiliation, actually believe the US has anything other than effectively open borders right now? To the credit of Governor Abbott, he is genuinely solving a problem for the citizens of his state by bussing illegals out of Texas. But, the number of illegals he’s bussing are ultimately a drop in the bucket when compared to immigration overall. Biden has brought in illegals by the millions each year of his presidency. Abbott is just one of many people giving illegals free rides around the US.

America is a very big country. You cannot saturate liberal cities with enough illegals to make them stop supporting open borders. Liberal states are usually only liberal because they have massive numbers of immigrants already. The illegals can move freely after they arrive and will migrate to where they can find work, food, and cheaper housing, if they aren’t just provided those things for free by various government entities and charities that exist solely to facilitate illegal immigration

As illegal immigration has spiraled out of control, it has produced no changes in the attitudes of Democrats towards it. They want open borders. The only “solutions” to the problem they find acceptable will be in furtherance of that, be it temporary legal status that never ends or an outright amnesty. Neither of these options should be acceptable to conservatives.

DeSantis has no excuses. By his own admission, he was trying to highlight the supposed hypocrisy of liberal officials through these flights. They’re not being hypocritical, they genuinely support open borders. All of their actions, official and unofficial, back this up. The illegals weren’t “deported,” as DeSantis claimed, they were given free stuff and allowed to stay indefinitely. If that’s the sort of action conservatives are trying to force liberals into, I doubt it will work out for them in the long term.