[Zeituni Onyango is President Obama’s aunt, his father’s half-sister. She came to America on a temporary visa in 2000 and illegally overstayed until granted asylum in 2010.]
Anyone who doesn’t think Bush W and then the courts were correct to grant this particular woman asylum just isn’t thinking. Relatives of a sitting American President present a unique and compelling circumstance.
This interview from Boston TV in the fall of 2010 is fascinating – it’s making the email rounds again. I hate anecdotes and those that use them to make a political point. We cannot know whether this, or any, individual is a fringe looney or a statistically valid representation of some group or mind set. Never the less, this interview hits our current role-of-government argument in the solar plexus.
Aunt Zeituni: 'The System Took Advantage of Me'
Exclusive, Jonathan Elias, WBZ-TV, Boston, September 21, 2010
10 minutes
Zeituni Onyango’s statements are outrageous, no matter your politics, but the interview conjures broader questions about our system and about entrenched political and cultural attitudes. Watch, you’ll be equally mesmerized.
Here are a few of my thoughts:
· Illegals should not only be barred from our entitlement systems and institutions, any attempt to participate should result in getting legal or getting sent home.
o I think we should issue IDs to every citizen and visitor and ask for identification in every official transaction but most of what we need to enforce the law is already available.
· How did this woman get public housing and disability status and payments?
o She got a Social Security card when she got employment in 2001. Then she became illegal and the government started sending her disability checks. How hard is it for the computerized government to connect the dots?
o With a Social Security card – unrevoked even though the government issued it to a temporary visa holder – any person can get all the other benefits available to any citizen, in any state.
o We just don’t want to enforce the law. Why not?
· What is the source of Ms Onyango’s astonishing attitudes about what America owes her?
o Is this unique individual silliness?
o Or is it cultural and if so, which culture; African, American progressive, American under class, some sort of religious/political doctrine?
· How much of what she espouses does the American progressive movement agree with? There is an important growing debate in the country about the role of government.
· How long can we tolerate an immigration system which encourages lawlessness, sends the law abiding, highly educated foreigner home and bars business from bringing highly skilled immigrants to American jobs?
I believe President Obama when he says he would welcome a chance for the 2012 election to be a debate about competing visions for the nation’s future – anything would be better for him than a referendum on his first term. The President confidently predicts that he would easily win a debate about the correct vision for America’s future – I sincerely doubt it.
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