Whoopi Goldberg highlights the "brown people issue" of immigration on "The View"

"We don’t have any problem when people come through the border from Canada," Goldberg said

By Kelly McClure

Nights & Weekends Editor

Published September 15, 2022 8:20PM (EDT)

Whoopi Goldberg on "The View" (ABC/Lou Rocco)
Whoopi Goldberg on "The View" (ABC/Lou Rocco)

On Thursday's episode of "The View," host Whoopi Goldberg helped to lead a discussion centered on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' recent decision to use state funds to fly two planes of migrants to Martha's Vineyard.

While co-host Sunny Hostin diverged the conversation into talk of how Martha's Vineyard is a beautiful place for the transported migrants to be, mentioning that it's one of the only places that allowed Black people to own property in the late 1800's, Goldberg brought it back around to the fact that, as she put it, "these are people you're playing with," in reference to DeSantis' maneuver.

"Here's what's interesting, we don't have any problem when people come through the border from Canada," Goldberg said. "People overstay their visas all the time . . . my point is because it's been made into a brown people issue, it's a problem. We don't take care of the Haitians that are trying to come here. We don't take care of them."

As DeSantis spokeswoman Taryn Fenske explained on Wednesday, the impetus for the relocation of these migrants to Martha's Vineyard was so they could be in a "sanctuary state" like Massachusetts.


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"States like Massachusetts, New York, and California will better facilitate the care of these individuals who they have invited into our country by incentivizing illegal immigration through their designation as 'sanctuary states' and support for the Biden Administration's open border policies," Fenske said. But, as Goldberg pointed out in the opening of Thursday's episode of "The View," these people should receive that in America because that's what America is supposed to be all about.

"Call me crazy, but I remember the big tall green lady — you know the one that's over the river — she kinda said 'Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.' I thought that was part of what we did here in the United States," Goldberg said. 

Watch the clip here:


By Kelly McClure

Kelly McClure is Salon's Nights and Weekends Editor covering daily news, politics and culture. Her work has been featured in Vulture, The A.V. Club, Vanity Fair, Cosmopolitan, Nylon, Vice, and elsewhere. She is the author of Something is Always Happening Somewhere.

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