Ivanka Trump, the honored guest of Canadian PM Justin Trudeau, together with our UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, all attended a new Broadway play opening on Wednesday night called "Come From Away." This musical (shades of "Hamilton") is about how a small town with a big airport in Newfoundland, Gander, warmly welcomed an almost doubling of its population when 6,579 plane passengers were stranded when their planes were forced to land there on 9/11/2003 ... after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center ... see: CNN Story.
The too obvious message here is that these humble Canadian townsfolk were good and noble when they opened their homes to all these strangers who had "come from away" and therefore we too should be welcoming Syrian and other Middle-Eastern immigrants in this same neighborly spirit. Otherwise, to use that common Canadian slight, we are "hosers." I suppose I will be labeled hard-hearted by pointing out the important differences in this simple-minded comparison:
- These air passengers were obviously short-term guests, whereas the current immigrant influx are to be permanent ... likely requiring long-term public assistance -- money, medical, housing, food and schooling
- Most of these air passengers were from a similar culture and language as the Newfoundlanders ... not so with these new immigrants being recommended.
- It was quite unlikely that there were any terrorists, disease-ridden, or other unsavory types secreted among these airline passengers. These Syrian and other Middle-Eastern immigrant are usually portrayed as just women and children, whereas the opposite is true ... well over half are testosterone-laden young men ... as many countries in Europe are now finding out.
Conflating these two "come from away" populations to make political hay is naive, condescending and even dangerous. The irony of using an event surrounding 9/11 to argue for more Middle-Eastern immigration is obviously lost on the backers of this play. We are living in treacherous times which require mature thinking and actions. There is no reason that stringent and rational filters cannot be placed on our immigrant experience ... despite what a few fuzzy-headed federal judges might wish.
Afterward: I recently discovered the derivation of the"hoser" term. Apparently it originally referred to people who siphoned gasoline from neighbors' cars using a length of garden hose.
10 comments:
Another popular origin story holds that in outdoor ice hockey before ice resurfacers, the losing team in a hockey game would have to hose down the rink after a game to make the ice smooth again. Thus the term hoser was synonymous with loser.
Canada is getting border-crossing refugee settlers too. They just seem to have the spirit in that play and on the plaque at the Statue of Liberty... or did we ship that back to France? http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/a-refugee-flood-pull-yourself-together-canada/
Back when Lady Liberty was erected we had Ellis Island ... where refugees were screened and many we sent back. And those coming here were "yearning to breath free." Today, some of these migrants are out to subvert our national purpose, yet many want to just wave them on in. This is called "romantic agony" ... a recipe for another disaster like 9/11.
Refugees are vetted. https://www.state.gov/j/prm/ra/admissions/ just not on an island in the harbor.
You are thinking of illegal immigrants that are not simply overstaying a visa but just walked over the border. There is work here. You even told me you hired one yourself to do tree work. Did he try to kill you? Will you turn him in?
As to 9/11. those were hardly refugees what with their Saudi passports and deep pockets. We love Saudis.
I see a Trumpian "Trail of Tears" in the offing where we cordon off some shitball desert turf where we march all the Muslims to internment... or interment. You could make it a fenced corral section of the border wall. That would be cost effective. Let them yearn to be free from there.
I didn't 't hire an illegal. He told me was one while drinking water I gave him after he was done. Good intentions are noble but often counterproductive and dangerous. Open borders is another liberal insanity.
I see. You did not ask for any papers -- insurance or licenses -- when you hired him. He was just as illegal when you hired him as he was afterward. He likely sent $$$ back to Guatemala telling his friends that the very people that hate illegals the most, in fact hire them because they work for modest cash without any employee tax contributions or records. Another conservative insanity.
Avoid assuming. My daughter hired a tree company to trim the trees over her deck. He was the guy in the cherry-picker bucket. Also you don't have to 'hate' illegals to think that they should follow our laws.
The insanity of open boarders is that there are probably half a billion people who would like to emigrate to the USA. Impossible!! Read Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" and then file your compassion under "road to hell".
I expressed no compassion. I ask contractors if their workers are all legals. I can do without immigrants and refugees altogether. As for illegals, round them up and ship them out. Don't even let foreigners buy US real estate unless they are citizens and residents. I am far more self-reliant, hard-hearted, and isolationist that many so-called "conservatives". America is great already.
That smacks of Ivanka's blubbering that she does not manufacture the products that carry her name in China, the people who manufacture those products do that so she isn't really choosing to not make them in the USA.
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