Elected officials are confronted by harrowing new issues stemming from the migrant crisis precipitated by the Biden administration’s border policies. But will Democrats learn their lesson about the true cost of illegal immigration, or use the crisis as an excuse to force the wrong “solutions” on the American people?
As reported by the Washington Free Beacon, New York Mayor Eric Adams said publicly this week that the influx of migrants is driving prostitution and creating a “black market of employment.”
The mayor told ABC7 that the migrant surge is the cause of “an increase in prostitution in our city,” as upwards of 10,000 migrants reportedly enter the city every month.
However, during his interview with ABC7, Adams advocated not for a more secure border, but for the federal government to provide expedited work permits for migrants.
“We have thousands of jobs. … We needed lifeguards over the summer. We could have filled those jobs,” said Adams. “So we’re hoping that the federal government looks at what we’re saying and makes it happen.”
Current federal law requires migrants to wait 150 days before applying for a work permit, which takes weeks to process.
Adams warned this month that the migrant crisis will “destroy” New York City, and has repeatedly clashed with both the White House and Gov. Kathy Hochul over the issue.
And New York is far from the only place in the country reeling from a massive influx of illegal aliens.
In Massachusetts, for example, Democratic Gov. Maura Healey has mobilized the national guard to deal with the massive surge in migrants since Joe Biden suspended Title 42.
Healey, like other leaders in blue areas, places the blame on the federal government, calling the crisis the product of “a confusing tangle of immigration laws, an inability for migrants to obtain work authorization from the federal government, an increase in the number of people coming to Massachusetts, and the lack of an affordable housing supply in our state.”
In areas such as New Jersey, Colorado, New York, and Washington, D.C., politicians are beginning to employ similar tactics as they find themselves overwhelmed by the flood of asylum seekers from across the southern border.
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy has vocally stated his opposition to allowing excess migrants from New York into his state. And, as the Free Beacon notes, “Colorado governor Jared Polis (D.) earlier this year took a page out of Governor Greg Abbott’s (R., Texas) playbook, busing migrants who had been difficult to accommodate to New York City and Chicago.”
Chicago, meanwhile, just tapped into $33 million in federal funds to deal with the migrant crisis.
Block Club Chicago reports:
The $33 million comes from federal grants through the Department of Homeland Security and federal pass-through grants from the Illinois Department of Human Services, according to the ordinance.
The money will cover previous and future expenses connected to helping asylum seekers.… Of the $33 million, $19.8 million is earmarked for the cost of food and $13.2 for the cost of shelter spaces, according to The Daily Line.
The ordinance also included other federal and state funds for the Chicago Department of Public Health and the Police Department.
… The additional funding comes as [the] city has spent nearly $133 million from August 2022 through July 2023 on the ongoing migrant crisis, according to a recent city presentation. The Mayor’s Office said it expects the crisis to cost the city another $123 million through the rest of the year.
In total, it’s expected that the migrant crisis in Chicago will cost taxpayers $255 by the end of this year — that’s in just one city.
And there are consequences beyond the economic impact. As some local leaders in New York are pointing out, the large migrant population could have an enormous effect on municipal elections.
As seen on Fox News, Staten Island Borough President Vito Fossella is among several officials who oppose the attempt to turn a closed Staten Island Catholic school into a migrant shelter.
During a Thursday press conference, as reported by Fox, Fossella explained why he and others have brought a lawsuit to stop the former St. John Villa Academy from being used to house migrants:
Actually two years ago, the city council passed a law to allow non-citizens the right to vote. And one of the conditions was that if you had work permits, you can vote in municipal elections. So if work permits are granted to the asylum seekers, they in turn will be allowed to vote in municipal elections if the appellate division reverses the trial court….
So in all of this discussion, I am sure their hearts are in the right place. We think to give 50,000, 75,000 people who arrived here a few weeks ago, giving them the right to vote in municipal elections, even though they’re non-citizens, we think is a bad idea and bad policy.
Of course, if Democrats can successfully give themselves tens of thousands of new votes in the upcoming elections, for them it will be a feature — not a bug — of their migration policy.
