President Biden announced on Wednesday that children 5-11 can begin receiving the vaccination for COVID-19. It's a significant step toward protecting all Americans and restoring some semblance of normalcy as kids return to school.
After the announcement, the President took questions from the press. And true to form, Fox News' White Correspondent, Peter Doocy, managed to swerve so far off course he ended up in a landfill in another county. The exchange began with Biden having a little fun at Doocy's expense, saying "This ought to be good," as he called on him. And then they engaged in the following exchange:
Doocy: About the way forward, Mr. President, as you were leaving for your overseas trip there were reports that were surfacing that your administration is planning to pay illegal immigrants who were separated from their families at the border up to $450,000 each, possibly $1 million per family. Do you think that that might incentivize more people to come over illegally?
Biden: If you guys keep sending that garbage out, yeah. But it’s not true.
Doocy: So this is a garbage report?
Biden: Yeah. $450,000 per person, is that what you are saying?
Doocy: That were separated from a family member under the last administration.
Biden: That’s not going to happen.
It's curious that Doocy would even bring up the subject of how Donald Trump enacted policies that resulted in more than 5,600 children being ripped from their parents with no process in place to keep track of them or to reunite the families. It's a crime against humanity that was designed purposefully to punish innocent babies.
Biden's response characterized Doocy's question perfectly. It is a "garbage" assertion to raise the matter of compensation for the families that were harmed without acknowledging that such compensation would only be paid as the result of litigation or settlement by the victimized parties.
Biden could have been more clear about that in his response, but he was likely more interested in preventing Doocy's false premise from becoming perceived as factual. The truth is that...
"Thousands of migrant parents and children separated from each other at the U.S. border by Trump administration policies may soon be eligible for hundreds of thousands of dollars per person in compensation, according to three sources familiar with ongoing negotiations in a lawsuit brought on behalf of separated families." [...]
"The talks are part of negotiations between the Justice Department and lawyers representing the separated families in a number of tort cases that have claimed the families experienced harm when they were forcibly separated."
There hasn't been any dollar amount agreed to. However, if/when there is, it will surely far less than the potential judgment awarded should the matter go to trial. So the Biden administration's solution will undoubtedly save hundreds of millions of dollars, while still having the decency to provide compensation so that the families can heal.
Biden's response also noted the ludicrous suggestion that any compensation "might incentivize more people to come over illegally." Doocy knows that the only people who would be eligible for compensation are those whose families were torn apart by Trump's sadistic policies. So he seems to think that having your family destroyed would be appealing to migrants who are fleeing the poverty and violence that was traumatizing them in their home countries.
Fox News and Republicans have been at the forefront of encouraging migrants to come to the U.S. They have repeatedly advertised the fallacy of "open borders" with the intention that it draw migrants whom they they could then condemn for coming here.
So while the Biden administration is discouraging people from coming to the U.S., Fox News is making it sound like they will get free entry and cash bonuses for doing so. And all of this so that they can blame Biden because the migrants believed what Fox News told them. If anyone should be paying compensation it's Fox News.
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