Six hundred and fifteen thousand.
That’s how many dollars the administration of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis apparently paid an aviation company last week to transport 48 illegal immigrants from San Antonio to Martha’s Vineyard.
And while part of me laughs at the Democrats’ hypocritical uproar that has resulted from DeSantis’s political theater, the other part of me recognizes this for what it is: a mindless partisan stunt that further symbolizes the collapse of America’s political institutions.
Exactly what did DeSantis accomplish by sending a few dozen illegal immigrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard? The answer is exactly nothing, except for tossing a chunk of red meat to conservative voters ahead of his likely 2024 presidential bid.
And he did it at the expense of human beings who are simply looking for a better life for themselves and their families, which feeds right into Democrat talking points that Republicans are unsympathetic, calloused bigots who don’t care about the plight and suffering of their fellow man.
Our southern border is a mess. Reasonable people can agree on that. It’s mostly the doing of President Joe Biden. Reasonable people should be able to agree on that, too. Biden’s presidency has been an unmitigated disaster, and the border crisis is just one reason why.
If there’s anything good to take away from last week’s stunt, it helps expose a real problem that’s being ignored by politicians. Millions of migrants are pouring across the border, and they don’t have housing or jobs waiting on them.
But DeSantis’s response is not a solution. It’s an exacerbation of the problem, at the expense of people who, if reports are to be believed, thought they were being sent to Boston for jobs.
How could DeSantis have better spent $615,000? Let’s count the ways. For starters, he could’ve probably paid off three or four mortgages and given three or four Florida families a big leg up in some rural and impoverished part of the state.
It’s worse than the $615,000 currently in the news, though. The total price tag of the money that Florida’s Republican legislature has approved for relocating illegal immigrants is $12 million.
As U.S. politics continue to swirl around the drain, tens of millions of common Americans are waiting for one party or the other to take the high road. Sadly, DeSantis — who will almost certainly be the GOP nominee for president in 2024 if Donald Trump isn’t — has proven that the Republicans aren’t yet ready to be that party.