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News / Opinion / Columns

Westneat: Send buses of migrants to Seattle

By Danny Westneat

Published: October 9, 2022, 6:01am

The gag at Martha’s Vineyard having run its course, Republicans now are hinting they may send busloads or planeloads of migrants to the next available conservative punchline city.

That would be Seattle.

The Republican Governors Association has a fundraising pitch centered around a red-meat survey question for its base: “Where should GOP governors send Biden’s Buses of Illegal Immigrants?” This refers to how Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and other red-state cowboys have been dumping groups of duped refugees or asylum-seekers into blue-state cities.

Who should be next, the survey asks. OK, since you asked. I vote “Seattle.”

Yes, that’s right, do Seattle next, please. Better yet, do the whole state of Washington. Send us some refugees. We want you to. Though I don’t speak for Seattle and certainly not for the whole state of Washington, I am 100 percent confident that we want them. So if your pitch is serious, by all means, send them our way.

How can I say this? Well for starters, for the past decade Washington has been one of the top states in the nation for taking in refugees. Already in 2022, we have taken in nearly 3,000 Afghan war evacuees (fourth in the nation), as well as 763 Afghani “special visa” migrants (also fourth), many of whom helped our military and then fled the Taliban. This is something people around here tend to be proud of, not something to hide from.

A second reason I can say Washington is willing and able to take more refugees is our excellent resettlement aid groups keep saying they can and need to do more. This past year, Washington’s Legislature passed $36 million in grants and funds to help resettle refugees here. Much of this aid was bipartisan.

Border states have a case that we need stronger border security and a revamp of our immigration and asylum laws. But surprise dumps of immigrants who have weathered abuse doesn’t make this case. The recipient cities are not the ones who end up looking bad. Just show a modicum of good faith and call us beforehand. The answer will be “yes” — a win-win.

Again, how can I be sure?

Well we have a bit of a history here. Back when the world was facing a similar refugee crisis, and other governors were turning migrants away, we had a governor who told one of them this: “Would you please tell that (bleep) what it says on the bottom of the Statue of Liberty?”

That was in 1975. An aide, Ralph Munro, had been sent by Washington Gov. Dan Evans to Vietnamese refugee camps in California, where the governor there was trying to get rid of them. Washington became the first state to resettle what were then called “the boat people.”

“That was the message he (Evans) was delivering,” Munro recounted. “That this is America’s job. When people are in trouble like this, that part of our job is to do our share. And so we, as a state, were going to do our share.”

Evans was not only a Republican, he was a member of this same Republican Governors Association that now wants to send migrants away. Republicans are the thing that’s really changed in this story.

So go ahead, send us your buses. Previous migrants started Little Saigon in Seattle; maybe these will start Little Caracas or Little Kabul. Both the question and the answer repeat through history: Do you want these people? Yes, we do.

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