U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., left, joined at right by U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., responds to base remarks by President Donald Trump after he called for four Democratic congresswomen of color to go back to their “broken” countries, as he exploited the nation’s glaring racial divisions once again for political gain, during a news conference at the Capitol in Washington, Monday, July 15, 2019. All four congresswomen are American citizens and three of the four were born in the U.S. Omar is the first Somali-American in Congress. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) is in Iowa, campaigning for socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT).
While pitching for him, she explained how, when she first landed here in the United States in New York City, from a Kenyan refugee camp where she had been living after her family fled Somalia, she was disappointed by what she saw.
Rep. Omar cont’d, explains disappointment moving to U.S. & seeing homeless people rather than “white picket fences”
“Our reality is full of homeless people, our reality is full of families who have moms & dads who are going w/o breakfast or dinner to provide for their children" pic.twitter.com/LJjFLqQxnN
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) February 1, 2020
From Townhall:
“When I first came to the United States, I remember one of the first things that I saw was homeless people sleeping on the sides of Manhattan when we arrived in New York. And I remember turning to my father and saying, ‘This doesn’t look like the America you promised.’ And my father looked at me and said, ‘Hush, child, we are going to get to our America,'” Omar recounted. “Because the America we were shown in the orientation tapes when we were coming here from the refugee camp in Kenya had beautiful homes with white picket fences, happy families eating a full meal in their beautiful living rooms. It had happy children getting on the bus to go to their beautiful schools. It had pictures of amazing malls, megamalls, and had pictures of beautifully built bridges and highways. It was a picture of abundance. Now that is the ideal.”
“That is the America we all know we deserve but our reality is full of homeless people. Our reality is full of families who have moms and dads who are going without dinner or lunch or breakfast just so that they can have enough for their children,” she explained. “Our reality is full of kids who are showing up to schools that are full of mold and leaking rooftops. Our reality has children who are facing drills every single day to learn about how they can escape being shot in our schools.”
No, reality is not “full of homeless people” for the majority of America or children being shot “every single day” in schools. That’s a dishonest picture of America. The “beautiful homes” and “amazing malls” are far more abundant than the limited areas in which there are homeless people. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t any homeless, but under the Trump administration, homelessness nationally has gone down.
One reason that might be is because a non-socialist with good economic policies won in 2016 and that has enlivened the economy, bringing the best economy and the lowest unemployment in years.
But Omar misses the fact that homelessness is largely in cities and areas run by Democrats. One place where homelessness hasn’t gone down and actually is on the rise is in California especially in San Francisco, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s district.
Perhaps if Pelosi and another Californian, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) were less concerned about taking down Trump and more concerned about their districts, they might actually get something done.
Meanwhile, she was able to come here and become a member of Congress, something which, in very few other countries, would have been possible.
She should be thanking America for all it has given her and lifting it up.
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