MSNBC Uses Beck Controversy as Springboard to Criticize Securing Borders

On Thursday’s “Ronan Farrow Daily” MSNBC’s Ronan Farrow and Jose Diaz-Balart, along with CNBC contributor Steve Rattner used the controversy over radio and TV host Glenn Beck’s plan to give food, soccer balls, and teddy bears to illegal immigrants as a jumping-off point to criticize individuals who want to secure the border.

Farrow asked “there’s this movement called Christians Against Illegal Immigration. Is it a Christian thing to do to be welcoming and compassionate? Why aren’t we seeing more support in that group given the argument that Glenn Beck is making there?” Rattner responded by arguing that those who want to repatriate unaccompanied minors weren’t “humanitarian,” stating “I think you do have to focus on this, and ‘when you heard the congressman [Ted Poe] before, what he was saying was, ‘close the border. Repeal the 2008 law, at least with these three countries.’ and so these kids would either end up on the other side of the border sitting in Mexico for the rest of their lives or get murdered back in their home countries, and I think we ought to have a more thoughtful solution than that, I don’t have that solution right here and now but, I don’t think that the solution of just turning them away and saying ‘go figure it out yourselves’ is a very humanitarian thing to do.’”

 Diaz-Balart additionally argued that lack of compassion was responsible for a failure to pass a pathway to citizenship for children in other countries who have immediate family members in the US, responding to Farrow’s query “is there no room for that kind of a [compassionate] sentiment in the current conservative movement?” with “no, the conservative movement, no. There are some Republicans, and a handful of them in the House that have been working, many of them for years, to try and get some bipartisan agreement, and apparently the leadership of the Republican Party in the house is simply not interested in dealing with this very serious and imminent issue.” He also urged “immigration reform. Close the border…and at the same time, that those who are already here in the United States can bring their immediate family members.”

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