Venezuela's Welfare Has Run Out. Now They Want Ours

Couldn't we get some Danes instead?

     The massive news coverage of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ “political stunt” of sending 50 illegal aliens to Martha’s Vineyard reminds me of the media’s “political stunt” of referring to illegals as “legal asylum-seekers.”

     Number one: They broke into our country. They’re illegal aliens. Number two: All asylum claims are frauds. Every single one.

     Asylum is nothing but a conveyer belt to bring the worst people on Earth to our shores. You say you turned your own country into a hellhole? Fantastic! Come right in!

     No one gets asylum from a well-run country. Why would we want to admit people who have demonstrated the wisdom, foresight and diligence to produce a functioning society? Rewards await only those who’ve participated in the creation of complete disaster zones. (Just think of what these great thinkers could do for our country!)

     Take the Venezuelan illegal aliens whom DeSantis sent to Martha’s Vineyard. Biden’s press secretary and human kewpie doll, Karine Jean-Pierre, repeatedly referred to the briefly loved illegals as “people who are fleeing communism, who are fleeing hardship ... desperate people -- people who are trying to come here because they're fleeing communism themselves.”

     How did Venezuela become communist again?

     As The Martha’s Vineyard Times explained (once the illegals were safely expelled and the island fumigated), Venezuela’s “humanitarian crisis” resulted from that country’s “complicated political and socioeconomic history.”

     Actually, it’s not that complicated. Poor people in Venezuela voted for it. Oh boy, did they vote for it.

     The ridiculous peasant Hugo Chavez promised Venezuela’s poor that he would take vengeance on the rich -- “the squalid ones” -- and give their stuff to the poor. Millions of poor people responded: YESSSSS!!!

     Beginning in 1998, and five times after that, the poor came out in droves to support this clown. Fist pumping! Dancing in the streets! Red shirts as far as the eye could see!

     As The New York Times described it, “To the adoring, impoverished masses who catapulted him to power, Hugo Chavez Frias is El Comandante, their protector and benefactor, the bold leader who will wipe out 40 years of inequality and corruption and redirect this country's enormous oil wealth to better their lives.”

     Chavez basically promised to deliver the Ta-Nehisi Coates “equity” agenda that's so popular with the Democratic Party right now. The poor believed the rich were rich because they had stolen from the poor. Chavez vowed to take it back. It was sort of a 1619 Project for Venezuela.

     As promised, Chavez proceeded to seize private businesses, farms (by 2011, he’d expropriated 6 million acres of farmland) and golf resorts, telling poor people to move onto the club greens.

     Anybody want asylum yet? Nope!

     Between 1998 and Chavez’s death in 2013 -- whereupon he was promptly replaced with his handpicked successor, President Nicolas Maduro -- Venezuela’s poor voted for him over and over and over again: in 1998 (80% public approval rating his first year in office), in 2000 (winning 60% of the vote), in 2004 (59% against recalling him), in 2006 (winning 63% of the vote), in 2009 (54% voted to make him president for life) and finally in 2012 (winning 55% of the vote).

     Never has any public been polled more often and returned the same resounding answer.

     Well, they’re not fist-pumping anymore. Instead, Venezuela’s poor are claiming they “deserve” to access America’s generous welfare state.

     Twenty years of Chavez’s Diversity, Inclusion and Equity (DIE!) produced this: “a country whose economy has collapsed ... malnutrition and disease are soaring [and m]illions have emigrated to escape the grind of finding enough to eat, of living without reliable electricity or tap water,” as Bloomberg News put it in 2019.

     Venezuela is sitting on the largest oil reserves in the world, and the communists still couldn’t get it to work.

     Who could have seen that coming??? Oh, anyone with two functioning brain cells. There were little hints, like Chavez promising his very first year in office “to follow the path of Fidel," and describing Cuba as "a sea of happiness, social justice and true peace."

     Millions of Venezuela’s poor thought that sounded just peachy, and the rest did nothing. They act as if this 100% predictable catastrophe was a natural disaster for which they bear no responsibility.

     Yeah, I definitely want these people as my fellow citizens. They’ve shown solid judgment.

     Now that their own choices have wrecked their country, they demand free admission into ours. Unless they’re professional baseball players, I’m not seeing what’s in it for us.

     In the kewpie doll’s press conference proclaiming that these innocent little lambs “deserve better” (than being sent to a fabulous beach resort), she cheerfully listed the great heaping portions of welfare being ladled out to Hispanics:

     “[O]ur administration has delivered billions of dollars in loans to Hispanic small businesses, expanded the child tax credit to provide help to millions of families and reduce Hispanic child poverty by more than 40%, expanded access to quality healthcare to thousands of Latino families ... And thanks to President Biden's student loan debt relief program, almost half of Latino students with federal loans will see their debts forgiven.”

     The Democratic Party is cribbing Chavez’s lines. And it will work, because the same people who fell for it last time will be voting for it here.

     To be sure, the Venezuelan “asylum-seekers” aren’t any worse than other members of that illustrious group. If (when) they are granted asylum, these poor decision-makers will join:

     -- Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bombers (sometimes, they’re persecuted for a reason);

     -- Ibragim Todashev, who, along with Tamerlan, slit the throats of three Jewish men in Boston;

     -- Beatrice Munyenyezi, a genocidal Rwandan, who won asylum by lying about being a victim of the genocide, rather than a perpetrator.

     Those are just a few of our standout asylum grantees. To be fair, the illegal Venezuelans haven’t killed anybody yet, as far as we know. They’re more like a homeless guy who shows up on your doorstep after a lifetime of bad choices and demands that you give him your house.

     Perhaps, just this once, we should defer to the wisdom of our moral betters on Martha’s Vineyard and tell the Venezuelans: We love you! Now get the hell out.

     COPYRIGHT 2022 ANN COULTER