The Biden Administration is considering ending Trump-era COVID Title 42 policies that make it easier to deport migrants who show up at the southern border. In the meantime, exemptions are open to Ukrainians which led MSNBC’s Jose Diaz-Balart and Allen Orr of the American Immigration Lawyers Association to cry racism on the former’s Thursday show.
After highlighting the plight of one Cuban family, Diaz-Balart found one COVID-related measure MSNBC could oppose, “Yeah, I mean, Allen, the fact is that if, for example, the justification for Title 42 was, you know, COVID and the COVID pandemic, then COVID affects everybody equally, it doesn't matter where you're from, the color of your skin, your age, right? So—so--to say well, we're going to make exceptions on a case-by-case for this group, but not for others it does seem to show that really isn’t necessarily all about the science.”
If Diaz-Balart is really concerned about Cubans fleeing their communist dictatorship he direct his anger towards former President Obama, not Trump. Additionally, it is dishonest to suggest that everybody who shows up claiming asylum at the southern border is in a similar situation.
Orr was more explicit in decrying this alleged racism, “Right. It's about the racism and its as much the southern immigration strategy of scaring people which they have used the southern border to consistently, sort of, scare people rather than to understand this is an opportunity for us to meet the needs that we have and also the promise that we have made, the promise the Biden administration ran on.”
Attacking Biden from the left, Orr continued, “We’ve heard the promise, now it’s time for the policy, and the policy doesn't take two months to implement. It's not a concern about the number of people showing up at our ports because we only talk about the southern ports and not all the other ports where thousands of people show up every day, it's really not a problem.”
In an attempt to prove his point, Orr tried to suggest that Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invader are just like those who show up at the border, “And in this worldview, where we look at Poland, which is a little bit smaller than New Mexico, a third of the size of the United States has accepted 2 million people in 30 days and not only did they accept them. They gave them work authorizations and medical care. That's the humanitarian promise that we made after World War II and we're not meeting that promise.”
It is sad that it even needs to be clarified that fleeing Vladimir Putin’s bombs and leaving a mismanaged country run by corrupt and incompetent governments are not the same, but if it couldn’t call racism, MSNBC wouldn’t be MSNBC.
This segment was sponsored by E-Trade.
Here is a transcript for the March 31 show:
MSNBC Jose Diaz-Balart Reports
3/31/2022
10:21 PM ET
JOSE DIAZ-BALART: Yeah, I mean, Allen, the fact is that if, for example, the justification for Title 42 was, you know, COVID and the COVID pandemic, then COVID affects everybody equally, it doesn't matter where you're from, the color of your skin, your age, right? So—so--to say well, we're going to make exceptions on a case-by-case for this group, but not for others it does seem to show that really isn’t necessarily all about the science.
ALLEN ORR: Right. It's about the racism and its as much the southern immigration strategy of scaring people which they have used the southern border to consistently, sort of, scare people rather than to understand this is an opportunity for us to meet the needs that we have and also the promise that we have made, the promise the Biden administration ran on. We’ve heard the promise, now it’s time for the policy, and the policy doesn't take two months to implement. It's not a concern about the number of people showing up at our ports because we only talk about the southern ports and not all the other ports where thousands of people show up every day, it's really not a problem. And in this worldview, where we look at Poland, which is a little bit smaller than New Mexico, a third of the size of the United States has accepted 2 million people in 30 days and not only did they accept them. They gave them work authorizations and medical care. That's the humanitarian promise that we made after World War II and we're not meeting that promise, definitely not meeting it about this policy.
