Newsom can't be serious about term `kidnapping'
They can't be serious.
Gov. Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta are treating the arrival of a private plane that dropped off 16 migrants in front of a church in Sacramento as the crime of the century.
Newsom raced to Twitter to threaten kidnapping charges against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and for good measure, he called the GOP presidential candidate a “small, pathetic man.”
You only see name-calling like that in two places: middle school and presidential politics. Newsom's a little beyond middle school, but you have to wonder if this level of childish vitriol against DeSantis is effectively Newsom's announcement that he's running. Who knows, he could be the one facing charges if he doesn't start filing campaign finance reports soon.
Newsom's tweet further derided the Florida governor by sneering, “This isn't Martha's Vineyard.”
That's a reference to the time DeSantis chartered two planes and flew 50 mostly Venezuelan migrants to the wealthy and exclusive Massachusetts island community that brags to the world about its “sanctuary” policies. “Sanctuary” doesn't have an exact meaning, but it conveys the general view held by some politicians that enforcing immigration law is immoral.
DeSantis was following in the footsteps of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey. Their view was that sanctuary cities should stop lecturing everybody else and instead start providing food, housing and services to at least some of the thousands of migrants who were crossing the border into the United States every week.
Needless to say, the government officials running the sanctuary cities of Chicago; New York; Washington, D.C.; and Martha's Vineyard protested that they simply don't have the resources to care for an endless flow of migrants who are arriving without legal status.
That was the point.
It's almost comical that Newsom thinks the 16 migrants who arrived by private plane in Sacramento were kidnapped or misled into coming to Sacramento. Is he trying to say that no one in their right mind would willingly move to California?
A second planeload carrying another 20 migrants arrived Monday, bringing the total to 36 migrants brought to Sacramento. Newsom declared that his administration is “working with the California Department of Justice to investigate the circumstances around who paid for the group's travel and whether the individuals orchestrating this trip misled anyone with false promises.”
False promises?
The California government has already agreed to provide full-scope Medi-Cal coverage to all income-qualified undocumented immigrants, and the list of other government benefits available without any exclusion due to immigration status includes free education, food subsidies, in-state tuition for higher education and eligibility for various grants and cash assistance. If just one family member has a status that is eligible for subsidized housing, the whole family can enjoy subsidized housing, all courtesy of California's exhausted taxpayers.
The state government is even considering a version of unemployment benefits for undocumented workers.
But 36 migrants get off a plane in Sacramento and it must be kidnapping?
Bonta announced that the state is “evaluating potential criminal or civil action against those who transported or arranged for the transport of these vulnerable immigrants.”
Maybe he should take it up with the Biden administration, which has been arranging for the transport of so many migrants to San Diego that the U.S. government has leased out at least three hotels just to house them.
“State-sanctioned kidnapping is not a public policy choice, it is immoral and disgusting,” Bonta said. Not to mention expensive.
DeSantis signed legislation this year that authorizes another $12 million for what Florida calls its Unauthorized Alien Transport Program. Maybe the funding for the planes to Sacramento came from that program and maybe it didn't, but either way it is quite something to see California's top government officials go ballistic over the arrival of three dozen people in their own neighborhood.
The border-state governors who are sending migrants to cities far from the border are demonstrating that people have needs, and meeting those needs has a cost, and part of the cost is the suffering of people in need who are lawful residents. We should all be able to agree that we need a rational immigration policy based on reasonable laws that we can and will enforce.