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Just when you thought Republicans are the party of racists, a Democratic Mayor actually shatters the glass that separates us from the racist right when he says in a letter:

“President Franklin D. Roosevelt felt compelled to sequester Japanese foreign nationals after the bombing of Pearl Harbor,” he said, “and it appears that the threat of harm to America from ISIS now is just as real and serious as that from our enemies then.”

That person is Roanoke’s Democratic mayor, David Bowers according to the Washington Post. His statement denying the refugees into his city from Syria compares the justification of placing more than 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans in concentration camps… it is downright racist.

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He’s stating that the refugees cannot be trusted because of the attack in France is comparable to that of not trusting the immigrants from Japan after Pearl Harbor was attacked on December 7, 1941. The problem? Even U.S. citizens were placed into the concentration camps.

Former Republican President Ronald Reagan thought what happened to the Japanese and Japanese Americans was so wrong that he signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, officially apologizing and compensating more than 60,000 victims $20,000.

Bowers’ xenophobic and racist comment echoes the Republicans fear that our intelligence community is incapable of vetting out the “terrorists” from the refugees. If the Republican party are in fear, then why do they have confidence that the prisoners in Guantanamo are truly terrorists? Which means that, if the CIA, NSA, FBI, Homeland Security and all of our intelligence groups are incapable of weeding out the bad people, then who is in Gitmo and should they not be released as President Obama has tried to do and shut down Guantanamo Bay?

If then the Republicans and Democrats feel that the 100 plus inmates left in Gitmo are truly terrorists, then there would not be any reason to not allow our intelligence group to vet the refugees and to bring them in… unless Bowers and the Republican party are racists.

Photo from davidbowersroanoke.com