The movie ‘Chappaquiddick’ opens in theaters this week and it got me thinking, what if…
What if justice had been served and Kennedy was not in the Senate to spearhead the bill that would become the Refugee Act of 1980.
Senator Ted Kennedy is responsible for most of the problems we have today with immigration, by 1969 he had already done some very real damage to this country. But he didn’t drive through the bill that became the Refugee Act of 1980 until ten years later, in 1979.
That bill was signed in to law in March 1980 (the 17th, St. Patrick’s Day, exactly) in Jimmy Carter’s final year. (I don’t recall if by March ol’ Carter knew, or suspected, he was a one-termer or not.)
The Refugee Act of 1980, which only a few weeks ago passed its 38th anniversary, had set up the flawed system we see today where nine major contractors (using taxpayer dollars) monopolize the program, and, up until President Trump came along, pretty much called the shots on how the USRAP was managed.
I attended the 30th anniversary shindig of the signing of the Act at Georgetown Univ. and wrote about it here a few years ago. I asked this in 2011 after listening to speakers at the Georgetown celebration:
Is there a conspiracy by NGO’s to bring asylum seekers to US borders?
The major take-away of the day for me was the obvious push toward greater use of the asylum portion of the law.
The Open Borders crew knew then that there were limits to how many refugees they could get in through the normal process and were beginning to hang their hats on migrants coming to the border (where an immigration lawyer awaits them) and asking for asylum.
So that “Caravan,” on its way to our southern border at this very moment, is a direct legacy of Ted Kennedy who should have been driven out of the Senate in that fateful year—1969—and sent to prison!
Would there eventually have been a Refugee Act, maybe, but then again maybe not!