(The cartoon image above is by David Fitzsimmons in the Arizona Daily Star.)It has always amazed me that those who proclaim the loudest that they are christians often engage in the most unchristian behavior. And nowhere is this more true than among the Republicans elected to serve in Congress. These GOP officials campaign proudly as being christian, and believing in christian values -- but when they get to Washington, the only values they support are hate and bigotry. And in the last few days they compounded this sick behavior by directing their hate at children.
In the last nine months, about 50,000 children from Central America have shown up at the border and turned themselves in to Border Patrol officers. They say they are fleeing the violence in their own countries, and are just trying to save their own lives -- and most of them have relatives living in this country. The corporate media, encouraged by congressional Republicans, have tried to paint this as a major border crisis -- but it isn't. The numbers of these children are just a drop in the bucket compared to the millions of undocumented immigrants living and working in this country.
The president asked Congress for the money to feed, house, and clothe these children while investigating their claims of being refugees. This reasonable action would allow those found to be true refugees to stay in this country, while the rest would be deported. But that wasn't good enough for the congressional Republicans, falling far short of satisfying their hate for brown-skinned people (even children trying to save their own lives).
After a few days of arguing, the House Republicans came up with their own "solution" to the situation, and passed it on a party-line vote. But that "solution" was far from a christian one. They began by overturning a law that guaranteed immigrant children the right to a court hearing before being deported (a bill signed into law by Republican George W. Bush). This would allow those children to be deported as quickly as possible -- without any regard to their safety.
Their bill also authorized some spending -- $400 million for more border security (even though Homeland Security has already given our border security its top rating, and the growth rate for undocumented immigrants has dropped to zero), $20 million to speed up the deportation process, and $270 million to send National Guard troops to the border (even though they are not properly trained for that duty). The bill also contains some money to house the children during the small window of time they would await deportation. The Republicans simply don't care about the danger many of these children would face when deported.
That would have been bad enough, and worthy of their enshrinement in a hall of shame -- but the Republicans didn't stop there. They doubled-down on their hate and passed a second bill. This second bill overturns the president's executive order stopping the deportation of "Dreamers" (children brought to this country by their parents when very young, and who have contributed by staying out of trouble, serving in the U.S. military and/or attending college). Even though these Dreamers have lived in the U.S. most of their lives and are doing their best to contribute to this country, the hate-filled congressional Republicans want them deported -- because they happen to have been born in another country (and have brown skin).
Now the Republicans will go home and brag to their racist teabagger base that they have solved the "border crisis". The truth is that they have done nothing but publicly display their very unchristian hatred and bigotry. Fortunately, this ridiculous bill has no chance of passing the Senate, and if it somehow did, President Obama has promised to veto it.
Those congressional Republicans probably think they have done what the people want -- but they haven't. They have just shot themselves in the foot one more time (feet that were already riddled with bullets). They have once again done just the opposite of what most Americans wanted -- and given voters one more reason (among many) to vote against them in November.
The charts below were made with information from the Public Religion Research Institute. Their survey was done between July 23rd and 27th of a random national sample of 1,026 adults, and has a margin of error of 3.1 points. As you can see, most Americans think their refugee claim might be true -- and don't want those children deported unless that claim can be proven to be false.
