Editorials: Impractical cruelty

Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird is among 16 Republican attorneys general to join a lawsuit stripping protections for the undocumented spouses of US citizens. If successful, it would be a terrible blow to thriving families living right here in Storm Lake, subjecting children to be separated from a parent or forcing families to move.

The Biden Administration put up rules in June that would allow undocumented spouses who have lived here for at least 10 years to get on a track to citizenship, without having to leave the country first and wait years to re-enter. The rule would benefit about 500,000 spouses and their children. The Biden policy helps keep hard-working, clean-living families together helping build communities like Storm Lake.

We know people in this situation. They have good jobs, they go to church and support good causes, cheer their kids in school, mow their lawns and, yes, pay taxes. It would be heartbreaking to see any of them leave. The pain would be worse for the families themselves, forced back into countries that they might have been too young to even remember or husbands separated from wives and children from their parents.

It’s unreasonable and counterproductive to rural communities in Iowa struggling to find workers.

Bird claimed in a Friday press release that the Biden rules “created an illegal amnesty scheme that fuels mass illegal immigration and allows unvetted aliens to live and work in the country.“

That’s not true. It is not an illegal amnesty, it is an earned path to permanent residency and, ultimately, citizenship for good people who are in fact vetted. Criminals are not covered. The people we know want to be upstanding citizens and patriots but our broken system will not allow their integration.

There is a meanness to all this that does not serve Iowa. It goes against the practical. It is anti-family.

Bird’s lawsuits and Gov. Kim Reynolds’s trips to the southern border are not motivated by what is right or what works best for Storm Lake. They are pursuing a national political agenda that has nothing to do with our interests. They create a hostile environment that drives people out when we need them. Rural Iowa is depopulating. We need state leaders to build communities, not seek to rip them apart.

Virgil backs Melton

The value of endorsements is debatable, but it is at least noteworthy that Republican Kevin Virgil announced over the weekend that he supports Democrat Ryan Melton of Nevada in his challenge to Rep. Randy Feenstra, R-Hull, for the Fourth District seat in Congress. Virgil won nearly 40% of the vote in a June primary against Feenstra.

The primary vote and Virgil’s endorsement of Melton indicate fractures in the GOP, and fairly widespread dissatisfaction among the base.

Virgil’s campaigned against carbon dioxide pipelines and asserted that Feenstra is beholden to corporate interests — including Smithfield Foods, a subsidiary of a Chinese conglomerate.

Feenstra dismissed Virgil as a “New York liberal.” Virgil’s bio describes him as a fifth-generation Iowan from Sutherland. Virgil was an Airborne Ranger, worked for the CIA, and started a business that caters to the Defense Department. Not exactly a snowflake. More a libertarian than Feenstra, such that some of his issues intersect with Melton’s.

Melton sounded happy to join hands with Virgil (who also endorsed Donald Trump).

Melton says he is hearing on the hustings that Republicans are grumbling. That may be, but it is quite another thing to vote for a Democrat. Enthusiasm for Donald Trump is not as high as it was eight years ago in Northwest Iowa. Melton says he senses opportunity.

We wish Melton the best. Feenstra has done nothing for Storm Lake and Buena Vista County. We still do not have a Farm Bill, more than a year late, and probably will not have one until after the elections. That is on Feenstra. He is on the corporate payroll. Republicans may express their dissatisfaction in a primary, or even tell a Democrat knocking on their door. The odds against any challenger in this conservative quarter are steep, but crazy things can happen if this becomes a wave election.