Darryl Metcalfe Moves to Block Immigrant Children from Pennsylvania
You’ve probably heard by now about all those immigrant children who have arrived at America’s southern border this year. Rep. Darryl Metcalfe has, and he wants Pennsylvania to have nothing to do with them. So he’s proposing a bill that would threaten the state license of any care facility that houses any such children in cooperation with federal officials. There are hundreds of such children being housed in the state.
In addition to suspending state-issued licenses, Metcalfe’s legislation would prohibit any contracts between the Commonwealth and the Office of Refugee Resettlement to house the unaccompanied children in state-owned facilities.
“Pennsylvania residents have expressed concerns that unaccompanied illegal alien youth entering the Commonwealth could be carrying contagious diseases and that older youth could be members of violent gangs,” Metcalfe said. “The Office of Refugee Resettlement has not released any information of possible criminal background or medical information of youth sent to facilities in communities throughout the Commonwealth.”
Pennsylvania residents might have overwrought concerns, then. Many of the countries sending children here have higher vaccination rates against contagious disease than the United States — better hope WE don’t make THEM sick. (Children arriving in federal custody are screened and vaccinated by the Border Patrol, in fact.) As for the concern about gangs: The arriving children probably share those concerns — they’re coming here to flee criminal gangs in their own country. It wouldn’t be an unprecedented irony for some of those kids to turn to another gang for protection, true, but mostly they seem to be trying to get away from violence.
No word on when Metcalfe will introduce his bill.
