Texas vs Refugees

The Dallas Morning News' Editorial section, has put up a lovely article called "In dropping legal challenge to Syrian refugees, Texas is pragmatic — but hardly humane". I highly recommend taking a look at this piece. It really represents how inhumane our state government is being towards the Syrian Refugees.

“Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's office has quietly dropped its 10-month legal crusade to bar Syrian refugees fleeing their homeland's barbaric civil war from entering this state.” Obviously, this case would have never made it into trial, because our state does not even have the power to sue in a situation like this. We didn’t drop the case because of “a sudden humanitarian impulse on the part of our state's top GOP leaders.” We dropped the case because litigation costs money.” Period. End of sentence. Done.

I like the way that the author (whoever he or she is), doesn’t just go with their gut, but that they give some solid evidence in their argument, which truly helps them to look more credible as a source. They point out that Governor Greg Abbott hasn’t made a peep about why the lawsuit was dropped. Hmmmm…. Interesting.

This argument was clothed in the robe of safety. “Well, all these refugees are terrorist and they can’t come here cause that isn’t safe, and cause… well… I said so!” (not an actual quote btw.) They believed that they would be putting Texans at risk by bringing in people who are escaping from horrors that none of us could even imagine. They are dangerous extremists, and they have no place here apparently.

The author is believes it is “unlikely to have been a change of heart, a startling sunburst of recognition that of more than 1,000 Syrian refugees resettled in Texas since 2011, none are known to have posed any semblance of a terror threat.” Agreed.

I think that the target audience for this post would be people who disagree with Texas backing away from this resettlement program. This is very much so on that side of the argument. I felt like it was geared towards me and I personally feel the same way.

I also think that it was really smart of the writers to break it down for us at the end. They put up a little section called “How We Got Here”. Listing various things in the recent past that all in all lead us to this point in time. I love that just because not everyone ready will be fully versed in this situation. Which will totally turn readers off! If they can’t understand something, they will more than likely just skip over it, or not bother to even keep reading at all!  This to me is a clear effort on their part to make the story easier to digest, which is the opposite of what other sources do. Why do they make legislation so hard to read and understand? Maybe they don’t really want you to know what they are up to… Ruh Roh.