The vibes are the results. To Florida Republicans (and Republicans in general), the only thing that matters is owning the libs, and no cost is too great in this pursuit (it helps that they’re not great with numbers and don’t ask many questions).
Since they exist in the Fox News bubble, they’ll never find out that the migrants came out of this situation living better than many Florida voters. It doesn’t compute that liberals actually want to see the poor get housed. Conservatives will never find out that no libs were actually owned in this stunt.
I can’t see anything that would change these dynamics, so these cows will never stop crying to be milked, and Republicans will always be there to milk them.
How it’s playing amongst the deplorables (I’ve got one or two former colleagues on fb who fall into that category):
“And here I thought MASKACHUSETTS was a sanctuary state…. these people are in such a lovely place and they get HOOD MILK AND POST CEREAL!!! Wowwwww Not even a hot friggin meal.”
“so now the left calls them “trash”… lol that’s almost as insulting a breakfast burrito… bunch of hypocrites and the most intolerant party seeing these “asylum” seekers didn’t make 48hrs on the rich, white, elite, snobs island.”
This. There’s also the question of who are the people on the ground doing the leg work. Texas DPS troopers or Texas Rangers? ICE personnel? Local police or sheriff’s deputies? Ordinary MAGAs who volunteer for the operation?
Seems to me that people dying in locked trucks after being abandoned by smugglers constitutes proof that we don’t have the “open borders” that conservatives are always railing against.
You don’t hear about people dying trying to get from Ohio to Michigan.
Speaking at a news conference in Daytona Beach, DeSantis defended using taxpayer dollars to send 50 migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard because he said many people who cross the border end up in Florida. He said people working for Florida are in Texas and they “profile” individuals who are likely headed to Florida.
Florida, he added, has hired its own contractor to coordinate the state’s relocation efforts in Texas, though DeSantis did not close the door on working with Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott to arrange future transportation.
So in addition to paying for flights, people are being paid by Florida taxpayers to go to not-Florida and investigate where migrants might be wanting to go.
Apparently the bill authorizing the money actually says it’s for relocation of undocumented migrants who end up in Florida (and of course that makes total sense, doesn’t it?), but eh, whatever, I guess:
The state budget DeSantis signed this year allocated $12 million to move “unauthorized aliens” but specified the intent was to transport people “from this state.” Asked about that provision, DeSantis dismissed it as semantic because so many migrants end up in Florida, but they are not moving there in groups large enough to intercept.
So Florida allocated the 12 mil solely for the purpose of fucking with people? It’s an asshole move by the state where there’s no way to dress it up to look like there’s some kind of benefit to it. In this case it can be asked: “why are people so mean?” It can’t even be said that they’re shipping people in Florida elsewhere. I hope Florida Ds are making a stink, as best they can.
“The money for the flights came from a $12 million program approved by the (added by bobot: Florida state) Legislature this year for contractors to move undocumented migrants from Florida to other states.
That funding came from the interest earned on $8.8 billion the state received from Washington for coronavirus recovery efforts, money that immigration advocates and state Democrats said should have been used to help people struggling because of the pandemic.”
I’m not so sure it is a mistake. DeSantis is running for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. A cost of this is that he will do less well this November.
Now, if he actually loses to Charlie Crist, then it will have been a mistake.
This may already have been said, but immigrants to the U.S., including the undocumented, did not come here because they heard the U.S. has the highest standard of living. They mostly came because they have friends or family, here in the U.S., who, knowing how terrible life is in a country such as Venezuala, advised it. The migrants mostly know who and where they want to go to, and are going to get there. If they are offered a free ride to Massachusetts, and their cousin lives in Rhode Island, they will take it. And if their cousin lives in Miami and someone tricks them into going to Chicago, Greyhound may be selling a one-way ticket to Miami.
I would say that what DeSantis and Abbott are doing is cruel, except that, compared to some of the other exploiters the migrants had to get through or past to get to the U.S. border, said governors are minor irritants.
I’m beginning to doubt whether or not it’s a political mistake is part of the calculation any longer. Lately I’m finding this running through my mind more and more:
“All the ruffians do is what he [Sharkey] says; and what he says is mostly: hack, burn, and ruin; and now it’s come to killing. […] They cut down trees and let 'em lie, they burn houses and build no more”
This does make some sense to me and helps explain why DeSantis is rounding up immigrants in San Antonio rather than Miami. Republicans made big gains with South Florida Hispanics in 2020. “Build the wall” and anti-immigrant rhetoric was not nearly the turn off for these voters that many Democrats assumed it would be. But there’s a difference between political rhetoric and cousin Mauricio actually being hustled onto a flight out-of-state. People can be enormous hypocrites when a policy they support actually starts impacting them or someone they know, and the last thing DeSantis wants is to accidentally create a Venezuelan Elian Gonzalez.
That was going to be my next question: will the Cuban-American community care about this politically? Please note I don’t mean in an emotional sense, just if a Democrat can make hay with it.
Yeah, other than lying to them, they weren’t badly mistreated. They were flown to a place that rallied to take care of them, and then were moved to a place with facilities to house them until they find someplace else to go.
Apparently, a lot of them want to go to Florida, where they have families. I doubt it’s any harder to get to Florida from MA than from TX. And they have legal status, and are free to move around. So I suppose most of them will end up in FL despite this little diversion.
