“You appreciate the burnt amber of falling leaves
And you want to delay
As you feel their breath as they whisper
“It won’t hurt you to betray now
If you just bow down”»
-Elvis Costello, “You Bowed”
I live on Staten Island, right next to St. John Villa Academy, a former Catholic school that New York Mayor Eric Adam’s administration had turned into a shelter for incoming migrants (due to security violations fire in the building that the migrants have had since then). been moved to a hotel in Manhattan). To say the shelter had become a hot topic among local residents would be an understatement.
Opposition to anything that helps migrant refugees in my neck of the woods should surprise no one. The majority of the congressional district’s territory is on ruby-red Staten Island, the only one of New York City’s five boroughs to vote for Trump in 2016 and 2020.
This episode, however, is more than just another immigration controversy. This is the point where political hypocrisy becomes personal hypocrisy.
Honorable Nicole Maliotakis (R-NY, 11th CD) is one of the local politicians who became heavily involved in protests against a migrant shelter. His district covers all of Staten Island and parts of western Brooklyn.
As a member of the New York State Assembly, Rep. Maliotakis was known as a moderate Republican who, while running for mayor in 2017, expressed regret for voting for Donald Trump for the president, even opposing his obsession with the Mexican border wall.
But his subsequent actions suggest it may have been insincere contrition. Perhaps it was cynically designed to attract voters in a city where the former president is widely unpopular. We cannot read his thoughts, so his true intentions cannot be known objectively. What we do know is that since 2017, she has adopted a significantly darker political vision, which points towards hypocrisy, particularly with regard to the issue of refugee immigration.
And this is where this story becomes hypocritical: Rep. Maliotakis’ parents might never have met if not for their past tolerance of migrant refugees.
You see, Rep. Maliotakis is the daughter of a Greek immigrant father and a Cuban refugee mother. In a 2019 interview with Newsmax, titled “Lesson Learned by the Daughter of a Cuban Refugee” Rep. Maliotakis said of her mother:
“As I spent Mother’s Day with my mother, I reflected on the struggles she faced as a Cuban refugee and how some in our country are trying to make the United States like the same nations that my mother and millions of immigrants fled. That’s why the best gift for Mother’s Day is to pass on to others some of the life lessons she taught me.
I will be honest; life has not always been easy or joyful for her. She had some tough times, but today she and my father live a comfortable life in the city, state and country they love. They arrived in the United States with nothing, from countries 10,000 miles apart, with no common ties except the shared experience of immigration, the desire to live the American dream, and a limited vocabulary in a new language.»
And yet, Rep. Maliotakis has been very outspoken in denying other Hispanic refugees similarly seeking a safer life in the United States, as noted in the post uploaded to X below.
Like many current Republican lawmakers, Maliotakis’ political behavior increasingly shares commonalities with radical anti-democracy libertarians such as Hans Hermann Hoppe and those of Dark illumination. As the New York Times reported: “Hans-Hermann Hoppe — believes that cultural homogeneity is a prerequisite for the socio-economic order. Mr. Hoppe envisions a dissolution of the current global map of states into thousands of small units the size of Hong Kong, Andorra and Monaco, without representative government and governed only by private contracts.(1)
To this end, she called for the secession of Staten Island from New York City and New York State (Hoppe advocates secession). She was an enthusiastic supporter of Rep. Jim Jordan’s (R-OH) failed bid for speaker of the House of Representatives (Jordan was suspected of playing an active role in the January 6 vote).th Insurrection; as Jordan Maliotakis voted against certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election). She also welcomed the successful candidacy of Mike Johnson (R-LA) for the same office (like Jordan, Johnson is a staunch economic libertarian and an election denier).
But getting back to Rep. Maliotakis’ ethnic heritage, this question is worth asking: Is refugee status only good for Cuban Hispanics like those near and dear to her, but not for other Hispanics? like those of Guatemala, San Salvadorans and Venezuelans?
Just like his mother wanted to escape Castro-inspired brutality in Cuba so do them Northern Triangle migrant refugees seek to escape intimidation and violence. A 2018 Brookings Institute Report counters current misinformation, stating unequivocally:
“It is outdated to believe that Salvadorans, Guatemalans, and Honduras are primarily looking for economic opportunities in the United States and should therefore wait in line for visas. For people fleeing these countries, waiting for a visa can result in death, rape or forced recruitment into crime. »
Rep. Maliotakis also doesn’t explain some relevant stories, like when George W. Bush’s administration worked with congressional Democrats and less vocal Republicans to try to pass immigration reform legislation. It was, however, sabotaged by a far-right element of the GOP with whom she increasingly shares a populist MAGA political philosophy.
Then there is the allegation of Jenna Budd, the former border patrol agent. She says her former colleagues removed the documents needed from migrants seeking refugee status and scattered them across the desert. By not exploring this claim, politicians like Nicole Maliotakis are not telling the whole story of the migrant’s journey.
In the final analysis, Nicole Maliotakis’ hypocrisy and omissions demonstrate an abdication of leadership, fleeing the opportunity to demonstrate through her own family history how today’s migrant refugee creates tomorrow’s good American. More than that, his behavior constitutes a bow to the anger of the crowd towards the newcomer. His serious inconsistency lies in his inability to welcome other refugees fleeing a hostile land as his own refugee mother had been able to do. It’s the old story of climbing a ladder and then pulling it from behind.
And that, my friends, is hypocrisy.
Frank L. Cocozzelli is the author of Conservative Commissioners: How Laissez-Faire Libertarianism Disturbingly Looks Like Communism
(1) New York Times, October 22, 2018, “Trump, Populists, and the Rise of Right-Wing Globalization”
