Let's build resorts and solve all our problems
by digby
Remember all those child refugees who came to our border looking for asylum last year? Well, we can send them all back now. A GOP Senator visited a country there and said it very beautiful so it's just fine:
It's not so bad to deport children to what was until recently the murder capital of the world, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said Friday, since Honduras is "a beautiful country" with "gorgeous resort zones."
More than 200,000 unaccompanied minors or mothers traveling with their children have fled to the United States from the Central American countries of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador over the last two years, with many of them asking for asylum or other humanitarian relief. All three countries are plagued by out-of-control gang violence and inadequate criminal justice systems. El Salvador and Guatemala are both still recovering from civil wars that ended in the 1990s, while Honduras suffered a coup in 2009.
But the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs chairman said he saw on a recent three-day trip to Honduras and Guatemala that the implication that deporting children there is "sending them into a war zone" is incorrect.
"We had security but, you know, Vicki, it's not a war zone," he said on WIBA Madison's "Up Front with Vicki McKenna." "It's obviously a poorer country than America but it's a beautiful country, it's a beautiful country. The people are beautiful."
Johnson said one solution for improving the situation there could be building more resorts.
"You could establish along the zones of the coast of the Caribbean in Honduras gorgeous resorts zones," he said. "If we could help them do that, they could start rebuilding their economy.
And then all the kids could serve nice drinks and clean the toilets of rich people! See, it's all good.