Dec 3, 2017 2 min read

In the summer of 1985, the aircraft carrier I was stationed on was conducting drills in the Caribbean when the crew of more than 5,000 sailors was told it was the real thing.

Man overboard.

The massive 90,000-ton vessel slowed down as much as she could, and every man on board was accounted for.

It turned out the unfortunate soul who was floundering in the darkness wasn’t one of our own. Rather, it was a lone Haitian on a raft, but we didn’t leave him to drown. He was taken on board by medical personnel, treated for dehydration and given a chance to recover from his harrowing ordeal.

Thirty-two years later, we have a commander in chief with the compassion of one of the barnacles clinging to the underside of my old gray lady, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower. The U.S. recently ended a program that granted temporary visas to 59,000 citizens from the native land of the man we plucked from the sea.

They were allowed to come to America after the cataclysmic 2010 earthquake that killed more than 300,000 of their countrymen. The humanitarian president who served before the current self-serving one, extended their temporary protected status. No such compassion is forthcoming from our twittering tearful tyrant.

They all get the boot in 18 months. All 59,000 of them. That’s about how many people fill one NFL stadium on any given Sunday.

Maybe if they were all stranded at sea, they would have a better chance of survival on our shores. Then again, with Captain Outrageous at the helm, the ship would be ordered to proceed on her present course, full speed ahead.

Vin Morabito

Scranton