Inhumane DeSantis Stunt Backfires

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Yesterday a group of undocumented immigrants from Venezuela were waking up in a shelter in San Antonio, Texas, and had no idea that before the day was over they would be unpacking their meager possessions on the affluent island of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts.  Nor could they have guessed that the governor of yet a third state, Florida, would be taking credit for shanghaiing them from Texas to Massachusetts.

The Venezuelans said they were approached by a woman in Texas who encouraged them to board a pair of charter planes which the woman said would transport them to Boston where jobs and housing were waiting for them.    The mysterious stranger managed to get around fifty individuals, some of whom were children as young as two-years-old, on the planes and in the air.  A couple of hours later they were disembarking, not in Boston, but in Martha's Vineyard with no one there to welcome them.  They had been abandoned,

When it became apparent what had happened, local residents rushed to the airport to help feed and care for the new arrivals.  Ron DeSantis, for his part, immediately went on Fox News and claimed credit for the stunt that had been intended to embarrass the commonwealth of Massachusetts, inconvenience and perhaps repulse the people of Martha's Vineyard, and interfere with the efforts of the immigrants to seek legal asylum.

DeSantis said that the Florida legislature had authorized $12 million to relocate undocumented immigrants in Florida to states that claimed to offer sanctuary to immigrants, states that DeSantis said encouraged the flow of undocumented immigrants to the United States.  The governor of Florida apparently could not find undocumented immigrants in his own state to remove to Massachusetts, so he went to Texas and borrowed some of theirs.  At this point it is still unclear if money from Florida taxpayers funded the flights from Texas to Massachusetts or not, but DeSantis, who has aspirations of running for President in 2024, was very quick to claim credit for the flights.

(There has been no official word yet as to what Florida teachers, who are among the lowest paid in the nation, thought about their legislature setting aside $12 million to help fund DeSantis's political ambitions.)

When the refugees arrived in Martha's Vineyard, there were no jobs or housing awaiting them, as they had been promised,  but what did greet them was an "army" of local volunteers who rolled up their sleeves and immediately set about bringing some humanity to the situation.  They brought in food to the new arrivals who had not eaten in hours, set up medical exams, and began arranging housing.  If Ron DeSantis had hoped to throw the residents of the affluent island into disarray and social upheaval, he was undoubtedly disappointed.   The residents of the Vineyard rallied to the aid of their fellow human beings, showing Floridians and Texans alike how Christian charity actually works.

Ron DeSantis got a reaction from the effete intellectual snobs on Martha's Vineyard, but it surely was not the reaction he was expecting. 

Human beings should be treated with respect and dignity - and politicians who are incapable of doing that should be transported to some rural Venezuelan backwater and abandoned!