Americans are very compassionate people and our hearts were melted this week by the distress shown by Democrat Governor J. B. Pritzker of Illinois. The Governor’s state is apparently being overwhelmed by “migrants”, a.k.a. illegal immigrants. And he is begging the person he considers responsible to stop it. That person is strangely not President Biden, the man in charge of enforcing immigration policy in the U.S. Neither is it himself, the man who signed into law legislation in 2021 which expanded protections for immigrant and refugee communities and established Illinois as the most welcoming state in the nation for illegal immigrants.
No, the man who should be blamed is Republican Governor Greg Abbott of Texas! Pritzker explained why in a heartfelt letter he wrote to the Texan on January 12th. Abbott has been bussing Illegals to ‘sanctuary’ cities and states for the last year or so. Sanctuary states are defined as states where governments refuse to work with Federal Agencies to deport Illegals and provide various services to house and feed them. ‘Democrat-run’ is the shorter definition.
Pritzker’s plea to Abbott was an Oscar contender: “I plead with you for mercy for the thousands of people who are powerless to speak for themselves. Please… suspend your transports and do not spend more people to our state.” Abbott’s response was a little different and can be summed up as “Hell, No”, with his reasoning being “Until President Biden steps up and does his job to secure the border, Texas will continue transporting migrants to sanctuary cities to help our local partners respond to this Biden-made crisis.”
The scope of the problem for Pritzker lies mostly with Chicago. It has received 32,000 illegals since August 2022. Most of these came from Texas, which claims its illegals delivery service has transported 30,800 to Chicago in that timeframe. The cost to Chicago can be seen by its expenditure of $138 Million in just 2023 alone. Plus it has no space left to put the illegal immigrants, and is being reduced to using O’Hare Airport as a temporary internment camp and building “winterised base camps” (this being Chicago the only one to be built so far had to be closed down as it was on a toxic waste site).
Throw in a nasty winter for the northern parts of the U.S. and it looks like Pritzker may have a point. Unless, of course, you compare this with the situation in Texas. Figures from CDP (U.S. Customs and Border Protection) show that the Biden Administration has let in nearly 11 million people into this country – nine million through border ports of entry and 1.7 million estimated ‘got-aways’ (those who did not bother stopping at ports of entry). Nearly all of these are economic migrants who are entering the country illegally, i.e., if you turn up at our borders you can enter the country without documentation only if you are a bona fide refugee. Of these about 45% enter through Texas. Since Texas has made the delights of Chicago available to illegal immigrants in August 2022, 2,081,485 folks have entered through Texas ports of entry plus a good portion of the ‘got-aways’. Pritzker is moaning about having to deal with 1% of the number facing Abbott. And Abbott also has to deal with the massive human trafficking that has overrun the Texas border, as well as the destructive amounts of fentanyl and active terrorists being smuggled in through an open border.
One feels you would have to have a heart of stone to read Pritzker’s plea for relief from his self-inflicted difficulties without laughing (apologies to Oscar Wilde).
Pritzker is not doing anything other than pleading of course. As a Democrat, his modus operandi is to complain about others rather than doing anything himself. But even if he pushed Illinois to get rid of all vestiges of being a sanctuary state the border would still be wide open and the ever-growing ranks of illegal immigrants would continue to swell. The real villain is of course Biden. Biden promised to throw open the borders in his campaign and he, or rather whoever is running the show in the White House right now, is delivering spectacularly on that promise.
For the remainder of Biden’s term as President we are stuck with a situation getting worse by the day. And it is becoming easy to see where this may all end this year. Pritzker’s problem of where to put illegals is starting to become a nationwide problem and we have all seen the beginnings of what housing and feeding 11 million (and counting) extra folks will actually mean.
Mayor of New York, Eric Adams, reports over 150,000 illegal immigrants have come to New York. He cannot blame Abbott too much as Abbott has only bussed 37,000 folks there. The rest have come in on the Biden Administration organised transport. He does not have the space and has been reduced to throwing kids out of their school in order to house illegal immigrants, who did not want to be in an Adams tent city in a rainstorm.
Democrat Governor Healey of Massachusetts has come up with another plan to deal with the illegal overload. A few months back Massachusetts shelters were all full with illegals as they are so sanctuary statist that they have a law that guarantees any homeless family access to emergency shelters. Her plan to deal with this was not, as you might expect, overthrowing said law, but was something a little more worrying. In the words of her Lt. Governor: “Most importantly, if you have an extra room or suite in your home, please consider hosting a family. Housing and shelter is our most pressing need and become a sponsor family.” Today’s suggestions have a nasty habit of becoming legislation with the Healeys of this world.
Even as little as five years ago, no-one would have forecast folks actually suggesting in the USA that your kids should be turfed out of their school building to provide accommodation to citizens from other countries. Equally, of course, they would not have forecast the half a trillion dollars being spent on the needs of non-citizen criminals (it being a criminal felony to enter the U.S. illegally), the horrible human trafficking that takes place on the border, the fentanyl plague that has hit the country hard and the serious terrorist threat we have so blithely let enter our borders.
Or as Biden’s team might say: “Job well done.”
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