Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., has managed to, once again, show up quite how little she knows about the world. In this case, it’s concerning that migrant caravan knocking at the unopened door in Tijuana, Mexico. We do actually have international law on this subject and it says that they don’t have the right of entry to the U.S. — not even as refugees, and especially not as asylum seekers.
In the process, she has managed to show how little she grasps of history too. Her comparison of Central Americans to Jewish refugees running from Hitler forgets what was actually done to those very refugees fleeing the Holocaust.
I should note that I’m entirely in favor of young women in politics, just as I am of any other activity that 50 percent of the species might want to perform in the flower of their youth. It’s Ocasio-Cortez that I have a problem with.
She tells us that asking to be considered a refugee isn’t a crime. Well, that’s not quite wholly and entirely true these days. But to then compare this to it not having been a crime for Jewish refugees causes a certain enragement.
What did actually happen to Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria? The U.S. maintained its strict controls on the number of migrants it would accept in those years up to entry into the war in 1941. There was also no difference made between simple migrants and refugees. Thus, with strict numerical controls on who could come, many couldn’t and thereby perished.
Actually, it was worse than this. One shipload on a ship named the St. Louis actually arrived but were sent back to Europe. Those who went back to mainland Europe then largely did die in the Holocaust. The U.S. took no part in the Kindertransport that saved tens of thousands of children (one of the finest TV clips you’ll ever see is on this subject) to the shame of the administration of the time, that of the great liberal President Franklin Roosevelt. It’s thought this resulted in 20,000 extra deaths.
Not knowing all this shows Ocasio-Cortez’s knowledge of history. Of course, after all of these events, we all had a look around the world and decided that we ought to do it differently. Which we do today, as apparently Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t know. Perhaps this is just my mansplaining ways, but I would hope that public pontification concerning the rights of asylum-seekers and refugees would at least be lightly informed by the rights of asylum-seekers and refugees under the international law which governs those rights — which is that there is no right for them to enter the U.S. at all.
Assume that they really are in fear of their lives in their home countries. Under the usual international conventions, they thus have a right (note, a right, an absolute one) to be welcomed into a safe country. This is as it should be if only on that reciprocal basis that we, or some of ours, might need that refuge at some point. There is little to no distinction made about why this right might exist. Issues of gender, sexuality, political activity, race, religion — the distinction isn’t really made. You’re in well-founded fear to your life and safety? You have that right, again right, to refuge. This is just.
However, it comes with a caveat. You must seek and accept that right in the first safe place you can reach. No, it doesn’t have to be geographically adjacent, it’s the first you can reach. If the path to safety is a flight from Phnom Penh to Seattle, then Seattle is the place of refuge and it must indeed be granted. If it’s to walk from one Central American country to another, then it’s the first safe place that is reached.
Mexico is a safe country for those fleeing specific horrors in Central America. Thus that’s where that refuge should be sought. And, as it happens, yes, seeking such asylum beyond that first safe place reached is indeed a breach of these rules. Perhaps it’s not quite a crime, but under any strict application of the rules it’s a sufficient reason to deny that asylum itself.
Ocasio-Cortez seems not to know the rules on the international approach to asylum and refugee status.
As a gammon (the latest British slang for elderly white males like myself, the comparison being to the puce color we turn when considering the young people of today), I of course don’t share all that many preoccupations with the progressives. But I doubt that I’m all that far out of order by hoping to insist that they know something of the world around them and how it is governed.
It’s the very insistence that they are refugees, deserving of asylum, which tells us that they’re not entitled to it in the U.S., simply because they’ve passed through other safe countries to get to that border they’re not being allowed to cross.
Why is it that the assumption that our rulers, however newly elected, should know this is in error?
Tim Worstall (@worstall) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a senior fellow at the Adam Smith Institute. You can read all his pieces at The Continental Telegraph.
