If anyone thought the right wing was even close to being done fearmongering over the refugee children showing up in the Unites States from Central America, they'd be sadly mistaken. They're going to continue flogging this for all it's worth and that's exactly what the viewers were treated to on this Saturday's Cavuto on Business on Fox.
The latest item to have them worked into a frenzy is the Department of Education issuing a fact sheet which says that “All children in the United States are entitled to equal access to a public elementary and secondary education, regardless of their or their parents’ actual or perceived national origin, citizenship or immigration status. This includes recently arrived unaccompanied children.”
After Cavuto regulars Charles Payne and Dagen McDowell started things off with the typical remarks we hear on the network day in and day out, bashing the migrants as a bunch of lazy moochers that just want to come here for free stuff and how we can't afford to take care of them, Ben Stein chimed in and went after the Department of Education and the Obama administration as well.
CAVUTO: Ben Stein, I did not realize again this was the law. This is what we have to do, but boy if that is the case, this is a great emboldening and encouraging effort to get illegals here, right? Or at least through their kids get them here, is it not?
STEIN: Well, I don't think it is the law. I think they just made it up. I mean, it reminds me of the many instances I had when I used to write for The New York Times and I would call up to the White House and ask where's the legal basis for something you've done and they would say, we don't need a legal basis, we just felt like doing it.
I don't think there's anything Constitutional, any law...
CAVUTO: Legal basis... we don't need no stinkin' legal basis.
STEIN: Right. Exactly. I don't think (crosstalk). I don't think there's any law saying we have to educate every child in America. Well, I make of the timing of course that they want votes from the Hispanic community. That's very obvious, but I think it's very dangerous, one, to let people in illegally no matter what and two, to make up the fact that there's this legal obligation, when in fact there is none written by the Congress as a law, and three, we are not a wealthy country any more. We are a broke country in many ways....
LASHINSKY: We're not a broke country and you know that. So what do you think we should do?
STEIN: Well, we are a broke country and you know that.
LASHINSKY: I don't.
STEIN: I think we should be doing it, but I don't think we should be doing it on the basis of a completely phony made-up law that doesn't exist. We should be doing it in the basis of a compassionate people, but that is a totally phony made-up law and you know very well that I hate like hell for you to call me a liar! You know very well...
LASHINSKY: I didn't say you were a liar. I think you're misinformed Ben.
STEIN: You know very well this country is broke.
LASHINSKY: Oh, on that subject.
STEIN: This country is broke. It's actuarially broke.
Adam Lashinsky, who was the only one even resembling a voice of reason on the panel was then cut off by Cavuto who said he'd have to look into Stein's claims. Whether he wanted to call him one or not, Lashinsky was right. Stein is a liar, unless he thinks that Supreme Court rulings should not be considered the law of the land.
Feds: Schools can't shut out undocumented immigrants:
The Obama administration delivered an unequivocally clear message — again — on Thursday: All children have a right to enroll in public schools regardless of their citizenship or immigration status.
Three years after clarifying to schools that they cannot turn away children, the Education and Justice Departments issued another set of guidance documents that provide in painstaking detail what schools can and cannot ask for when families want to enroll their children. The agencies also provided examples of acceptable enrollment policies. [...]
“Public school districts have an obligation to enroll students regardless of immigration status and without discrimination on the basis of race, color or national origin,” Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement. “The Justice Department will do everything it can to make sure schools meet this obligation. We will vigilantly enforce the law to ensure the schoolhouse door remains open to all.”
These state and district obligations are the result of the 1982 Supreme Court decision Plyler v. Doe, which struck down a Texas law that denied education funding for undocumented children. It also struck down the Tyler, Texas, school district’s attempt to charge undocumented families tuition to make up for the lost state funding.
Stein claimed we should take care of them because we're "compassionate." Yeah, right. If he really believed that he wouldn't be screaming to the hills about how we're "broke" on Faux "news" and can't afford to take care of them. It looks like whoever is managing Fox's blog knows Stein was lying as well, because they posted the segment without mentioning a word he said here.
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