Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis showed downright cruel audacity in slamming Democrats for going “berserk” with “virtue signaling” after he sent dozens of asylum-seeking migrants from his state to Martha’s Vineyard.
But, of course, cruelty was the point.
On Wednesday, the Republican governor transported more than 50 asylum-seekers, most of whom were from Venezuela, to the summer resort island off the coast of Massachusetts, without alerting local officials.
Known as a haven for such well-heeled liberals as former President Barack Obama, who has a multimillion-dollar home there, the island made a good symbol for a defiant DeSantis, as he made pretty clear in a Thursday speech.
He joined Republican Govs. Greg Abbott of Texas and Doug Ducey of Arizona in protesting Democratic-controlled “sanctuary” cities and states, which limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities. The trio want to stoke opposition to President Joe Biden’s supposedly lax border policies.
Yet, although the stunt was unannounced and unexpected, by all accounts the Vineyard — year-round population about 17,000 — did not go berserk.
And those supposedly spoiled Vineyard liberals did a lot more to help the migrants on this occasion than he did.
Instead of grandstanding, they went to work. They found temporary shelter for their unexpected guests in a local church. They gathered food and supplies. In short, they showed virtue, not just signaling, in response to the unnecessary emergency.
Similar responses have turned out to help other busloads of migrants recently sent to Chicago, New York and Washington — including close to Vice President Kamala Harris’ official mansion — by Abbott and Ducey.
Such is the state of our broken national debate over our broken immigration system, one of the issues that led to Washington’s current polarization and legislative gridlock.
In many ways, that big divide began to show itself with the collapse of the proposed Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007, a bipartisan attempt to compromise between providing a path to citizenship for those living in the country illegally and increased border enforcement.
It never received a vote and our national immigration debate has only gotten worse, partly because of too much virtue signaling and not enough common sense.
With the midterm elections approaching fast, we can hardly expect serious progress on this thorny issue soon. Instead we have new controversies, particularly reports that at least some of the migrants may have been duped into boarding the buses and plane under false pretenses.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, asked the Department of Justice to consider kidnapping charges against DeSantis over the nature of the extraordinary relocation of migrants to blue states.
Most tragic, putting politics aside for a moment, our immigration system really is something of a mess right now — overburdened, outdated and badly in need of overhaul — and it’s getting worse.
We need Congress and the White House to bridge the divide. If comprehensive legislation is a nonstarter, we need a series of smaller pieces of legislation.
Instead, we get what the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y., used to call “boob bait for the bubbas,” his shorthand for tough-talking rhetoric designed to placate conservative voters.
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Sure, we’ve seen the same sort of performative overreaching on the liberal side too.
Under either party’s banner, it offers a sad explanation for the public’s declining faith and rising cynicism over the sanity of our own lawmakers.
Other crises such as the pandemic have increased the pressure of asylum claims, which have bloomed to more than 156,000, so far this year, from 32,895 in 2010.
And the 2010 backlog of about 100,000 has mushroomed to more than 660,000. About a million people have been allowed into the country to await hearings in immigration court, according to a recent New York Times report. Each has been given a year to file an asylum claim.
By the way, asylum claims actually rose sharply under then-President Donald Trump, partly as a defense against his increased push to deport as many people as possible.
The Biden administration offered a ray of hope for relief with a rule change. For the first time this summer a few ICE detention facilities in Texas have been allowed to adjudicate some asylum claims with trained asylum officers, relieving the overburdened asylum courts.
Asylum-seekers still can appeal denials to a judge but the hope is that speeding up new cases will help slow the growing backlog and discourage applications that are false or lacking merit.
At least that’s a step in the right direction. But a lot more work remains to be done. Meanwhile we need to press leaders of both parties to come up with some real solutions, not just “boob bait,” on an issue too many already think is too hot to handle.
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Clarence Page, a member of the Tribune Editorial Board, blogs at www.chicagotribune.com/pagespage.