OPINION:
Between 1892 and 1954, 12 million legal immigrants passed through the halls of Ellis Island. The famed cathedral of immigration’s busiest year saw just over a million souls start a new life in America. In just three years, President Biden has allowed some 9 million illegals across the border.
As Americans die at a rate of 300 per day from fentanyl that is coming across the same border, crime attributed to illegals is increasing, and cities are turned into slums with millions more on welfare, many Americans are asking why the president and the federal government would abdicate their responsibility to enforce the law and protect our nation.
The answer is simple, and it creates perhaps the biggest incentive for Americans to elect conservatives, Republicans, and, yes, more sensible Democrats next year.
Back in November, and earlier this month, Denver Mayor Mike Johnston led a coalition of more than a dozen big city mayors to Washington to press for billions in additional taxpayer resources ostensibly to help pay for the millions of illegals flooding their municipalities.
They’re coming for their bailout.
Sure, the White House will deny that a big bailout is on the table. That is, until after the 2024 election. With Democrats in control of Congress, the first priority of the next Biden or Democrat term will be to use money from taxpayers in states like Tennessee, Ohio and Florida to pay for the mismanagement of ultra-leftist sanctuary cities.
As Republicans negotiate for more funding for border security, they must resist any effort by the White House or Congressional Democrats to take taxpayer money from an already strained federal budget and transfer it to these blue cities being cratered by the policies of left-wing hacks. Here’s why.
Chicago is facing a $538 million budget deficit in 2024 on top of an unfunded public employee pension liability of more than $35 billion.
New York City is spending nearly $3 billion this year to address the illegal immigrant crisis. According to the State Comptroller’s Office, the city expects its $5.1 billion budget shortfall in FY 2025 to reach $7.9 billion in FY 2027. Cumulative budget gaps for the three-year period could reach almost $20 billion.
In San Francisco, the unofficial capital of American wokeness, the city is on track to have a deficit that easily exceeds $1 billion by 2027. With only a $400 million budget hole, Los Angeles seems to be the champion of fiscal restraint for blue cities.
Democrats will tell you that allowing these cities to collapse under the weight of higher costs for social programs would be catastrophic. They would claim that these illegal immigrants need schools, health care, food and housing.
But it’s all a rouse. For Democrats, opening the border is about growing new voters, whatever the costs. It’s also about finding new ways to grab billions in taxpayer money for the legacy costs negotiated by Democrats with public employee unions that have saddled cities with massive unfunded liabilities.
We know that left-wing city councils are attempting to advance non-citizen voting in local school board elections. There are efforts to fast-track some form of amnesty for the more than 9 million illegals who have flooded across the border since Joe Biden became president.
The immigration emergency, created by the Democrats, will now also be used as a payoff for the government unions. It will be a vehicle to grow agencies, prevent layoffs, close budget gaps and create more bureaucracy. Money, after all, is fungible, especially when government is concerned.
Everybody who matters to today’s Democrat-Socialists wins big by the big blue city bailout.
The public school teachers and the other public unions get the cash. The politicians get more minority voters to bribe and control with welfare. The government bureaucracy gets bigger along with the social programs. The taxpayers in suburban and rural communities pay for it all.
The illegal immigrants get locked in generational dependency and never get to experience the real American dream.
This con should be a major message for Congressional Republicans as they try to expand their control on Capitol Hill this November. It could also be used by the Trump Campaign to drive a wedge between suburban voters and Democrats.
No one should fall for this. The body count is growing on the border as a result of the policy. Getting more money into these cities isn’t about the immigrants. It’s about the Democrat elites who need more sources of funding from overburdened federal taxpayers to give to their favorite backers. The cities are cities are cratering and their vultures are coming for taxpayers.
• Tom Basile is the host of “America Right Now” on Newsmax Television and is a columnist with The Washington Times.
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