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A Times Editorial
© St. Petersburg Times, published December 9, 2001
Ronda Storms took a mean-spirited swipe at legal immigrants the other day. The Hillsborough County commissioner wants to deny them health care under a government program that serves the poor. The idea came to her the day before Thanksgiving.
"If we continue," she told her colleagues, "we will have half of Texas and Mexico and the Philippines and everybody else here trying to get health care."
Texas, for the record, is part of the United States. Yet what's appalling is not Storms' gaffe, but her attempt to wrap discrimination under a guise of righteousness. Her concern for the finances of the health care fund would be easier to listen to if the commissioner hadn't spent her career gutting the very program she now allegedly cares about.
What a phony. If the issue is money, let's deny immigrants a range of subsidies -- bus passes, library cards. Better yet, refuse to send police and fire trucks to their homes. But the issue isn't money.
Storms, rounding the corner on an election year, is seizing the chance to kick around immigrants for political gain. Many politicians are this year. She even refused to draw a distinction between legal and illegal residents -- "it's irrelevant to me" -- or to acknowledge the important role that immigrants play in Storms' agriculture-heavy district. How do the growers feel, knowing that Storms, their elect-ed representative, is trying to deny their field workers access to preventive health care?
Legal immigrants pay taxes, too. They own property and businesses. They employ workers who feed entire families. When Storms says, "We should not be providing health care -- free health care -- for non-U.S. citizens," who is this "we" she is talking about?
Commissioner Jan Platt tried to impart some common sense. Legal residents, she said, should not be punished for following the law, especially those working and waiting to become naturalized citizens. "Are we going to start discriminating against them, too?" Platt asked. Stormed retorted: "That's America."
She has no idea what she's talking about.