Treating human beings like unwanted kittens left on the doorstep of an unwitting neighbor's home is unconscionable, but the political stunts being played by the governors of Arizona, Florida, and Texas are more disappointing than surprising.
The Republican governors used buses and airplanes to take roughly 150 migrants they didn't want in their states to New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts. They didn't alert local officials to prepare for their arrival. But it's not the first time that politics got the best of morality in this country.
The Statue of Liberty's plaque describes America as a welcoming beacon to "huddled masses yearning to breathe free." But a year before poet Emma Lazarus wrote "The New Colossus," Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Later came the Immigration Act of 1917, the Emergency Quota Act of 1921, and the National Origins Act of 1924. Each law was written to stem an influx of immigrants deemed undesirable by politicians.
