AOC: Calling Migrants Coming to US a 'Surge' Invokes White Supremacist Ideas
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaks during a news conference in the Queens borough of New York, Monday, Feb. 8, 2021. Seth Wenig/AP
- AOC said talking about migrants at the US-Mexico border as a "surge" pushes a white supremacist idea.
- "It's not a border crisis. It's an imperialism crisis, it's a climate crisis, it's a trade crisis," she said.
- A rise in migrants and children crossing the border is a challenge for the Biden administration.
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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Tuesday said that referring to the rise in border crossings over the past few months as a "surge" or "invasion" smacks of white supremacy.
"So much of our national conversation, which is not a conversation, about immigration, is driven by people who could not care less about immigrants. So often, people want to say, 'Why aren't you talking about the border crisis?' or 'Why aren't you talking about it in this way?' Well, we're talking about it, they just don't like how we're talking about it," she said while answering questions on her Instagram Story.
"It's not a border crisis. It's an imperialism crisis, it's a climate crisis, it's a trade crisis, and also, it's a carceral crisis," she added, arguing that the US' foreign policy legacy in Central America, its trade policies, and its contributions to global climate change have disproportionately affected the global South.
Read more: The MAGA messaging on immigration is scaring the hell out of some conservatives as millions of newly naturalized citizens will soon be joining the American electorate
Ocasio-Cortez also pointed out other issues with using the word "surge."
"Anyone who's using the word 'surge' around you, consciously, is trying to invoke a militaristic frame. And that's a problem. Because this is not a surge, these are children," she said. "And they are not insurgents. And we are not being invaded, which, by the way, is a white supremacist idea, philosophy, the idea that if an 'other' is coming in the population, that this is an invasion of who we are."
Early Wednesday, freshman GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene accused Ocasio-Cortez of "lying" and "being a racist," in connecting the terms "surge" to white supremacy.
The rate of encounters between border patrol officers and migrants crossing the US-Mexico border began increasing in the later months of the Trump administration and continued to rise during the first months of President Joe Biden's administration, the Associated Press reported.
The makeup of migrants crossing the border has also included a larger share of families and children, who are subject to higher legal protections and standards than adults migrating or seeking asylum alone.
Biden has made explicit public calls discouraging potential migrants from crossing the border to the US, but his administration is still contending with how to cope with the current immigration situation amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Biden administration has come under scrutiny from members of Congress on both sides of the aisle as well as immigration experts and advocates over the conditions that migrant children are facing in government custody.
In Biden's first news conference as president on March 25, reporters pressed the president on the current conditions at the border and the media's level of access to facilities where migrants are being held.
After giving an NBC crew exclusive access to a facility run by the Department of Health and Human Services where children are being kept in custody, the administration allowed reporters from CBS News and the Associated Press into the main facility Department of Homeland Security facility in Donna, Texas.
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AOC Rocks!
What we are actually dealing with here is a climate tipping point.
It's going to get much worse with secondary methanol release from the tundra and oceans.
Folk screwed the pooch by listening to politicians bought by oil billionaires instead of scientists.
Almost glad that I'm in my late 60s and won't experience the worst of it.
That 'surge' has been coming for 5 years now. Those migrant hordes of caravans too.
AOC should be ready to run for president in 15 years or so, if the country can wait that long.
A poem is not an immigration policy.
Maybe we should just bus all of the illegal immigrants up to the Canadian border and drop them off with a note saying, "You have wide open spaces with very few people; they are your problem now."
No, it's not, it's just a reputation, or at least it ONCE was. I always thought that only Native Americans were REAL Americans, and that everyone else was an immigrant or a descendant of an immigrant.
Send them to Canada? Not everyone from countries closer to the equator want to live in a country that has four seasons - "expecting winter, winter, leaving winter and construction". Even in southern Canada it snows from November to April. Vancouver, on the Pacific, is an exception to that.
Seriously! If these people want a better life "to the North," they might as well keep going. Canada has tons of room and socialized medicine. Why wouldn't you keep going?
For that matter, why isn't the country famous for polite people seeking out all these migrants? They could invite them to come. I wonder why they aren't . . .
Understanding Canada’s immigration system
300,000 people is approximately 1% of Canada/s population, which is about one tenth of America's population. Does America approve three million immigrants a year to become American citizens?
Further to that, due to the covid virus 2020 would not be a good basis to use, but in 2019, America naturalized less than a million immigrants.
.Oh, and yes, if they didn't mind the weather, immigrants probably WOULD have a better life in Canada, especially taking into consideration Canada's health care system, the general politeness of the people and the fact that the rate (per 100,000 population) of gun deaths in Canada is about one eighth that of America.
A Tuesday at the US/Mexico border.
Canada needs to do better. They have more land than the US does and a tenth the population. They have plenty of room, but they are hoarding the space. They need to do their fair share to take in these refugees at the Mexican border. Or does Canada hate brown people?
You seriously expect me to believe it's the weather keeping these people out of Canada?
Do you know what permafrost is? If you did, you wouldn't find it partcularly habitable. In fact, if you look at this map you would understand that not many people would want to live there, especially those who are used to a warmer climate where crops can grow.
Your excuse for not helping millions of desperate people is . . . permafrost - that brown people can't handle the cold.
So you think the people coming over our southern border are only capable of picking crops?
IMPASSE
She can be a silly person. This is one of those times.
You try putting many tens and hundreds of thousands of people - or millions over the course of years - on the border of any other country in the world, and that country will try to block, repel, or - at minimum - control the people trying to get in. All we are trying to do is put reasonable limits and controls on the people who want to come here, while also having a good understanding of who they are.
We are still - by FAR - the most welcoming country on the planet. But because we don't just throw open the border and let unlimited people come in, we're white supremacist imperialists? Like hell! Screw you, lady!
5 Countries with the Most Immigrants
Don't bother with reason and statistics. They don't want to hear it. This is all about feelings, labels, and trying to change a losing narrative for the Democrats on illegal immigrants coming into this country.
Either you accept all illegal immigrants, or you will be branded a racist by the Democrats.
You forgot to mention 'leftist brown shirts'
Thats awesome. Let's bring in some more immagrants and actually make the country work again.
Work at what? All our factories have moved to the countries these people are fleeing.
Poor undocumented immigrant refugees seeking asylum here generally spend their first generations in the US picking our fruits and vegetables and processing them along with butchering hogs, chicken and cattle. Some also go into landscaping, child care, kitchen work and the construction trades...
I know what they do. They have those things in other countries, too.
Poor illegal immigrants violating our laws; many times working illegally so employers don't have to pay taxes on their labor; and taxing our already overextended resources and infra structure.
We can't even take care of our our poor, sick, veterans, and disabled; but let's add a few more million illegals in to suck on the governmental tit and take resources we can't afford to expend.
Democrats are proving they don't give a fuck about US citizens. They need the illegals to grant them amnesty so they can get a new dependent voter stuck on the Democratic governmental tit.
AOC is really a special kind of stupid.
IT was bad enough during the last border crises that her contribution consisted on putting on a piece of performance art, screaming and crying for the "kids" behind the fences, not realizing that the camera angle actually revealed she was crying about an empty road. So she follows that up by making an ass of her herself.
So we are facing a surge of unaccompanied minors, invited by the President worked to elect, that has caused a humanitarian crises.
Is she mad about the overcrowding and the conditions at the border? Nope.
Is she mad Joe Biden tried to cover up the situation by channeling the USSR and censoring news coverage? Nope.
Is she mad Biden lied to the country about what's happening ? Nope
She's mad at the use of the perfectly appropriate word "surge." You can only laugh at her and her word salad of buzz words kids throw out in dorm rooms when they are 18. Sadly, she never progressed past that stage. She can't make a coherent argument, doesn't offers any solutions and has to assault the English language to distract from her own incompetence and hypocrisy.
It's bad enough someone this shallow can be elected to Congress, the really sad part is some people take her juvenile whining seriously.