Imagine if Alabama’s lawmakers began addressing the issue of geothermal energy.
And not just making criticism of specific techniques or companies. We’re talking about a heating pump tragedy.
introducing laws to make gas illegal. requesting the removal of any books that contain the term “hot springs” at catalogue board meetings. Using Hot Springs, Arkansas as a snickering abbreviation for everything the state is doing. Putting on criticism coats and filming television adverts outside Iceland’s waterfalls, vowing that Alabama will not become Reykjavík.
Watching these tremors over dried waters, you may ask yourself: Is this an Alabama thing?  , And: Is this an Alabama trouble?
It’s certainly, and it’s not. Alabama’s thermal industry is, in consequence, non- sequitur. But whatever issues may come with it, having a more varied energy market would, on stability, benefit us.
And already, this is how condition Republican talk about immigration.
It’s truly how U. S. Sen. Katie Britt has talked about it. She filmed an advertisement for her 2022 battle on the U. S. Mexico borders. She made a gimmick out of every emigration measure she introduced during her first three months in office.
On Thursday evening, during her broadly- gaped- at response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech, she told a shocking story about Karla Jacinto Romero, a woman who, as a 12- year- older girl, had been trafficked and biologically assaulted for four years. This appeared to be a result of Biden’s immigration laws, according to Britt.
” We would n’t be OK with this happening in a third- world country”, Britt said. ” This is the United States of America, and it’s past time we start acting like it”.
Jonathan Katz, a blogger, conducted an investigation into the allegations. Romaméro went through horrifying experiences with people smugglers. But they took position from 2004 to 2008, during George W. Bush’s term in office. And not in the United States or on the U. S. Mexico borders, but in Mexico.
Eventually, a Britt official later confirmed to the Washington Post that she was referring to Romero.
Britt repeatedly made her talking details while appearing on Fox News on Sunday night to re-air, resume, or start, claiming she was attempting to explain what was happening while making a conceptual debate about what she meant. ( The senator also said Biden’s policies were acting as a “magnet” for immigrants, which does n’t sound like someone who wants to help people fleeing violence of the kind she described. )
But this approach is n’t exclusive to Britt. It reflects the harsh absurdity of how immigration-related Alabama Republicans speak.
Gov. If” Joe Biden keeps shipping illegal refugees into our state,” Jay Ivey expresses fear of learning Spanish and deploys the National Guard to the frontier. Immigration rules violations from the state of New York from 2011 are still being investigated. Any bad thing involving an refugee is pump up by the conventional media. Over anything else, Britt and another group members demand activity on the border.
Listening to all this, you’d consider Alabama is a frontier position struggling to control higher levels of emigration.
It’s no.
One, Mexico is about 1, 000 km from Montgomery. Canada is about 1, 300 yards away. Alabama is not on either side of the border, unless there was an conquest that I’m unaware of.
Two, undocumented refugees have much lower crime rates than native-born Americans.
Three, refugees by and large miss Alabama. In the position, particularly in north Alabama, are that growing immigrant communities. However, it is not as impressive as what different parts of the nation exhibit. Fewer than 4 % of the country’s population is overseas- born, compared to 14 % nationwide. More than 6 % of Alabamians have a house language other than English. It’s 22 % in the country as a whole.
Then, we need more emigration to Alabama. The Black Belt is in the grips of a decades-long people decline, the state’s workplace contribution rate is poor, and the population is aging. It would be great to grow like Florida ( 22 % foreign born ) or Georgia ( 11 % foreign born ) and having more immigrants would do that.
But by and large, it’s never happening.
The Democratic reaction to these assertions is typically” the border is anywhere.” That is accurate, as every GOP national from Wyoming to South Carolina knows about it. They nod ferociously at anything Donald Trump says in terms of immigration at any second.
Britt and her colleagues refused to address the frontier problems they worked themselves into tears over because Trump told them to leave.
They’re major about obeying the previous leader. Never immigration.
But it is still being discussed.
Perhaps because it’s simpler to criticize something that might occur 1,000 yards apart than to confront real issues in Alabama.
Like gun crime, aided and abetted by common policies enacted by the Alabama Legislature. Like , awful costs of child mortality. And parental deaths. Or our higher rate of poverty, which keeps rising as you look at kids.
You’re hoping it’s not because our leaders believe that illegal immigrants are “poisoning the heart of our state,” as Trump does. That kind of speech has been perpetuated in Alabama through the years.
But whatever the purpose, Alabama’s Republican leaders are n’t responding to something that’s affecting the condition.  , They’re attacking Fox News articles. Doing Trump’s buying. Changing the world to make people afraid.
Katie Britt perhaps be misleading persons on immigration. She is one of the many Alabama Republicans who is unaware of the experiences surrounding the issue.
SUPPORT NEWS YOU TRUST.
