I cannot leave well enough alone. Like a character from a Stephen King story, I’m drawn to the shaking door to see what horror lurks behind it. Be warned. Once you open the door, you can never slam it quick enough and in politics, the horror is always greater than imagined.
Take last Monday morning as an example. A new employee was reporting for duty so I had a full slate of work ahead. Yet, I wanted to express my reservations about the Syrian refugee resettlement program via letter to Gov. Haley.
Before I wrote the letter, I researched the impact of the program on South Carolina. I found reports with refugee resettlement statistics, maps showing which states participated in the program, and spreadsheets showing annual costs flowing through each state to fund the program, all from the websites of Homeland Security and Customs & Immigration Service.
Then I found the website for the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). Not only was that door shaking but it oozed a slippery liberal sentiment.
So I opened it . . .
. . . and stepped into the mind of Barak Obama. I could see the world as he saw it, his eyes my window to the outside.
A slight nausea flooded over me from the garish light flooding back through his eyes. The light wasn’t bright white or tinged red. No rose colored glasses for him. The light was multicolored as if he were the culmination point of a rainbow, the treasure sought by all who believe in such things.
As I looked through the ORR website, I realized that this was his creation, a community organized by him, an expression of his only talent. A world where refugees are never questioned about intent or background but gladly offered all of the benefits of a generous and bankrupt welfare state. A world where troops are replaced with teammates and sincerity vanquishes all evil.
ObamaWorld was filled with former refugees washed in ObamaCare and waiving their Individual Development Account cards. Flush with matching money and eager to find their ethnic communities in their new neighborhoods where they will make a difference, they were proteges of their creator, filled with the Democratic zeal of oblates. At least some of them were.
Lurking in the corners of ObamaWorld like quiet shadow people were the skilled, the educated, the English fluent, the ambitious – those who thought America was synonymous with opportunity. Not opportunity to enroll in a new welfare servitude but opportunity to achieve. They came through the door looking to prove themselves, for direction towards a geographic area that needed their skills and not just a random assignment to whatever state would have them.
I tried to slam the door but the sunlight diffused the shadows revealing real people who deserve better.
Click to read my letter to Gov. Haley.
Click to read what the US Senate heard last September.
Click to see South Carolina funding.
Click to see 2014 refugee disbursement by state.
Click to read the latest ORR newsletter.
Click to read about ethnic community self-help.
Click to read about Individual Development Account program.