'Rhode Island First' Raimondo Hunts for New Yorkers [OPINION]

As it becomes more and more apparent that New Yorkers are likely going to be the reason many more thousands are afflicted by the COVID-19 coronavirus, Rhode Island Governor and Democrat Gina Raimondo has suddenly discovered a vein of President Trump's "America First" ideology.

While this complete hypocrite in Providence has advanced the state's endorsement for the presence of illegal immigrants in Rhode Island, she wants the RI State Police and RI National Guard to find those who have abandoned the shelter-in-place self-quarantine advisory and have instead decided to escape from New York.

What has Raimondo's leadership meant for illegal aliens from Guatemala, Mexico, Russia, Ireland, Egypt, China in Rhode Island? Great things if you're one of them. Sure, you betcha. Come on in. The more the merrier. It's what Roger Williams would have wanted.

Raimondo and the Democratic-dominated Rhode Island legislature are not crazy enough to see the wisdom of ensuring the proper vaccines were taken by foreign nationals. Hey, that's a federal issue, not one for the states.

Here is the surreal contrast: pull out a New York driver's license after being pulled over because the RI officials saw your vehicle's New York license plates, and you would have faced fines or even jail time if you did not subject yourself to a 14-day quarantine before going anywhere in the state of Rhode Island. Hey, you can't be too careful.

It came to a halt, though, when Raimondo was put on notice that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo was planning to sue over it. Technically, legally, she has no right to stop the pandemic from spreading to her state.

Of course, Governor Raimondo is – for the first time – correct to fear outsiders possibly bringing disease to her state. She's absolutely correct in not wanting people coming in droves from an area such as New York, which has almost one of every two cases in the United States.

As of Thursday, people from New York had eight to 10 times higher odds of testing positive for COVID-19 than the rest of us.

This is all about to change anyway since New Yorkers and others have gone from endorsing the #MeToo movement to the #MeFirst attitude in a New York minute. The disease will now rage in many other regions of our beloved country.

Manhattanites and mostly the more affluent have abandoned the directions from the health experts who have been pleading with them to shelter-in-place and have done what was best for themselves, not their nation.

Donald Trump's "America First" seems to be a repressed truth for many thousands of advisory defying New Yorkers who have tweaked the motto to "This American First."

In another surreal development, Mexicans have demanded that the border be shut down to prevent people from traveling to Mexico from the United States.

They are fearful that those coming from the United States, where COVID-19 cases are much higher than in Mexico, are doing so with no testing. The proverbial shoe is now on the other foot.

Rhode Island First, perhaps, is an eye-opener for those who could not see the wisdom in a more secure border before now. Maybe Governor Raimondo can start to sell "Make Rhode Island Great Again" hats?

Oh, one word of advice for my Ocean State peeps: don't mention where you're from while out and about having a drink in Manhattan or out in Queens after this gets back to normal. It might be a bad idea for a few years.

This is why I do prefer President Donald Trump over almost every candidate that I can think of. He says things which are frowned upon, but as we see, his thoughts are ones that most people, when pressed, really share in their own beliefs.

Conservatives are proven right about some important lessons in this most unwelcome challenge we all face:

First, we do need secure borders. People entering the USA need to prove they can't cause Americans to get sick here, because of their presence as carriers of dangerous and contagious pathogens.

Second, we do need to conserve money to face such things in life.

Third, it is a dangerous business to have such an open, global economy without the intellectual capacity to understand the need to be prepared to quickly confront the predictable threats which accompany the practice, such as more and more frequent pandemics.

Fourth, the climate change cult's insistence on pushing the Green Energy agenda cost many lives here. States like NY decided to invest in green energy incentives over purchasing medical devices like ventilators and other life-saving supplies.

The government has spent millions of tax dollars promoting public transportation, in spite of the more frequent outbreaks of viruses and disease. There should be no doubt that the packed transit systems in Europe, China, and the United States sped up the transmission of COVID-19 exponentially. Perhaps if they are encouraging this, they ought to have contingency plans for such a situation which include bolstering sanitizing surfaces and enforcing spacing on such vehicles rife with cross-contamination.

The liberals have been proven to be right about something, too. Often, when pro-border control advocates are debating the issue of illegal immigration, a progressive will ask what the pro-enforcement speaker would do if he or she were in the situation of many of the refugees and illegal immigrants were in today as they seek to get inside the USA.

Clearly, many Americans are not willing to stay home and chose to flee to places they believe to be safer from who or whatever it is from where they are emigrating.

The question is, will these lessons be learned by the right people?

Ken Pittman is the host of The Ken Pittman Show on 1420 WBSM New Bedford. He can be heard Saturdays from 9 a.m. to noon. Contact him at ken.pittman@townsquaremedia.com. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.