Posted on 08/31/2020 8:01:17 AM PDT by MarvinStinson
As a freshman senator in 1975, Joe Biden joined Sen. Robert Byrd (D., W.Va.) in opposing legislation allowing 130,000 Vietnam War refugees asylum in the United States, including thousands of children.
President Gerald Ford proposed a Vietnam refugee relief program that would settle thousands of Vietnamese and Cambodian families in the United States. The bill was met with resistance from a Democratic majority in Congress. Sen. Byrd cited fear of admitting "undesirables" such as "barmaids, prostitutes, and criminals" to the country.
Biden also took issue with Ford's proposal. During a Foreign Relations Committee hearing with Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Biden announced his concern with welcoming the refugees, charging that the Senate had not been informed of the number of refugees that the White House intended to offer safe harbor to.
Many of the refugees escaped communist rule and mass murder in Vietnam and Cambodia on leaky fishing boats. Thousands of these boat people, as they were called, died due to piracy, starvation, and drowning.
While the Indochina Refugee and Migration Assistance Act ultimately passed in May 1975, Senate efforts to obstruct assistance proved effective. The Senate cut over $100 million in funding from the House version of the bill, allocating $405 million toward refugee settlement rather than $507 million. Biden was one of only 20 senators to abstain from voting when the bill passed the Senate.
ByrdBidens colleague and an early opponent of Fords planwas a member of the white supremacist Ku Klux Klan as a young man.
President Ford told reporters he was "damned mad" about the pushback from Biden and others. "I am primarily very upset because the United States has had a long tradition of opening its doors to immigrants of all countries," he told reporters following the opposition.
Ford expressed disappointment with liberal colleagues who had voiced support for human rights but obstructed the legislation. "It just burns me up, these great humanitarians," he said. "They just want to turn their backs."
"We're a country built by immigrants from all areas of the world, and we've always been a very humanitarian nation, and when I read or heard the comments made a few days ago I was disappointed and very upset," he added.
Biden's current campaign platform echoes Ford's sentiments on immigration. His plan calls for "securing our values as a nation of immigrants."
"Under a Biden Administration, we will never turn our backs on who we are or that which makes us uniquely and proudly American," the plan reads. "The United States deserves an immigration policy that reflects our highest values as a nation."
The Biden campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Joe has a lot of baggage still in the closet.
Ah yes. 1979. I lived in SF when they arrived. The ducks in Golden Gate Park started disappearing. SF Chronicle took 2 days to put 2 and 2 together.
Biden .cited fear of admitting "undesirables" such as "barmaids, prostitutes, and criminals" to the country.
Unfortunately, some have even made it into the Halls of Congress.
The dirty b@sta@rd Demonrats lost the war by defunding RVN and then tried to reject the refugees they had created.
Byrd was simply saying more or less what Trump would say after the escalator ride in 2015. Was Ford wrong on this?
He wears the chains of a 47-year track record.
I’ll wager in early years he was against illegal immigration, legalized pot, homosexual marriage, affirmative action and quotas...
The mass exodus, of 130,000 Cubans from the port of Mariel to the United States in the spring of 1980 should help enlighten them ... It has been estimated that 18 percent of the total number, or 23,000 individuals, are criminals; 1,538 are in prisons in the UnIted States; and 469 are still being detained in camps.
We must note the disruption and confusion the exodus caused in this country ... and the dramatic increase in crime rates in those areas where these Cubans have settled. We should note the high unemployment rate among the refugees and the burden this places on local State, and Federal Governments and agencies.
https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/89991.pdf
So to use Joe Biden's logic, his committee said that:
"all Cubans are criminals"
The thing is, Biden supporters know Joe’s past, but also know it doesn’t matter, because he won’t be calling the shots, anyway.
Typical. The RATS deserted South Vietnam and then when the commies take over and start the killings the RATs abandon the refugees. A filthy Party with not one redeeming characteristic.
He also supported the harsher law and order that would have put many protesters in jail
Nothing says "young man" like silver hair and a turkey neck:
SO WHAT!
Just a couple of years ago he was molesting multiple children on VIDEO!
What about THAT!
No one cares about boat people! Especially boat people from FORTY-FIVE years ago!
Demonrats like Plugs didn’t want a solid bloc of anti-Communist Republican immigrant voters. Especially after they were responsible for their having to flee their home countries by supporting the Communist “victors.”
That will only until he could get paid big bucks for letting some of them on.
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