Each time I think our politics can’t get any weirder, something comes along to dash my fervent hope we’ve hit bottom. The governor of Florida and 2024 Presidential aspirant, Ron DeSantis, dispatches anonymous operatives to San Antonio, Texas, where they recruit asylum-seeking immigrants with promises of jobs and housing in Massachusetts. Instead, he flies them to Martha’s Vineyard by way of Florida only to dump them on the island’s runway. Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell applauds this likely illegal fraud, as has the robotic chorus at Fox News.

It can’t be long before buses pull up to the Colorado governor’s mansion and disgorge a similar human cargo. Calls have surely been directed to Phoenix and Austin where Gov. Doug Ducey and Gov. Greg Abbott are dispatching busloads of immigrants to California (including the vice president’s home), Chicago, New York and Washington, D.C. Both men claim Denver is on their list of future destinations. Why are they doing this and what do they hope to achieve? Mike Tomasky, editor of The New Republic, probably got it right when he observed, “… (Martha’s Vineyard) exposed how much the right needs its adherents to believe that the liberals they despise are, deep down, as cruel and vindictive as they are.”

Despite subsequent claims the wealthy liberals residing on the island were horrified upon the arrival of a ragamuffin mob, $175,000 was raised before nightfall, or more than $3,000 for each of the reported 48 asylum seekers. The migrants were transported to a mothballed military base on Cape Cod where vacant barracks and a mess hall were opened to house and feed them.

Curiously, for nearly half a century Florida Republicans have welcomed refugees to Miami from Fidel Castro’s Cuba with open arms. Why DeSantis rounded up Venezuelans seeking to escape the socialist dictatorship of Nicolas Maduro presents a puzzle. If embraced and cared for in Florida they should prove just as likely as Cubans to one day vote Republican.

Both American and international law extend protections to asylum seekers whose lives and liberties are under threat at home. Since Congress has been unable to reform immigration law for decades, the wait for an asylum application hearing can be as much as seven years. Refugees purchase homes, bear children, who automatically receive American citizenship, find jobs and pay taxes. We’re fortunate just now that there are millions of unfilled positions in service industries requiring little training. Employers can accommodate workers still struggling to learn English. Unfortunately, the work visa system is just as constipated as the rest of our immigration policy. States like Colorado, with a vibrant tourism industry, should offer an interim or probationary work permit of their own.

Alex Shepard, also writing in The New Republic, points out that DeSantis’ performative politics may be “… key to supremacy within the Republican Party,” while CNN’s Chris Cillizza speculates the Florida governor’s appeal to voters seems to be that he can generate the same immigrant outrage as Trump without the incompetence. Whether this is actually smart politics has yet to be determined. During the first two days following the puppet show on Martha’s Vineyard, Democratic gubernatorial opponent Charlie Crist watched half-a-million dollars an hour pour unsolicited into his campaign treasury. You have to conclude a substantial slice of Florida voters believe lying to migrants is immoral as well as unethical. Not to mention – Florida taxpayers paid for this stunt.

The “gang of eight”, which included both Colorado’s Michael Bennet and Florida’s Marco Rubio together with Arizona’s John McCain, were successful in breaking a Senate filibuster and passing an immigration-reform package. Their legislation then ran aground in the House as the Republican majority House refused to even debate their bill. George W. Bush also failed in his second term to advance a comprehensive immigration proposal. Republican antipathy toward migrants has grown so virulent that Rubio now denounces the bill he drafted! As the current PBS documentary from Ken Burns shows, the American response to German Jews attempting to escape the Holocaust was shaped by an anti-Semitic nativism that denied them shelter.

The ever-expanding divide in American politics has grown as wide as the inequities in wealth distribution, both shaking the foundations of our economy and our democracy. The journalist Anand Giridharadas, author of the 2018 book “Winners Take All,” recently noted: “We are living through a revolt against the future. The future will prevail.” Nothing can prevent the U.S. from becoming a “majority minority” nation before 2050. Our constitution was intended to accommodate such change. Irrespective of ethnicity, race, gender, skin color or religious affiliation, every citizen is an American – brothers and sisters in history’s greatest experiment. Our diversity is something we should brag about. Diversity has been and will continue to be the key to our prosperity and the guarantor of our freedoms.

Miller Hudson is a public affairs consultant and a former Colorado legislator.