OPINION:
Ten percent of New Jersey residents are illegal immigrants, according to a report released Wednesday by state Assemblyman Paul Kanitra, a Republican from Monmouth County.
Mr. Kanitra based his estimate on the Federation for American Immigration Reform’s 2023 count, which he updated to reflect the record number of illegal border crossings this year. He makes the reasonable assumption that New Jersey would continue receiving the same 4.5% share of unlawful visitors.
The Garden State is a favorite destination for gate-crashers from overseas. In 2022, Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, doled out $30 million in cash to illegal immigrants who could claim up to $4,000 per household. On top of that, the state also provides millions in housing assistance, legal services and health care. Throw in the free K-12 education, and state taxpayers wind up paying $7 billion a year to accommodate these uninvited foreigners.
Democrats are doing their best to conceal the staggering costs involved. In 2020, then-President Donald Trump attempted to add a direct question about citizenship to the census so policymakers could base decisions on accurate figures, but it was shut down by a lawsuit from blue states that prefer keeping the public in the dark.
A divided Supreme Court said the Commerce Department made bureaucratic mistakes in rushing the question onto the census form and would have to try again — which it won’t, under President Biden. None other than Matthew Colangelo, then counsel for the New York attorney general, led the successful charge to delete the citizenship question from the census.
Mr. Biden rewarded Mr. Colangelo by elevating him to the No. 3 job at the Department of Justice at the beginning of his administration before dispatching him back to New York so he could run the prosecution of Mr. Trump, his main campaign rival. As long as Mr. Biden remains in the White House, the border will remain open.
Texas realized it has to take border security into its own hands. On Wednesday, Arizona Republicans arrived at the same conclusion. They advanced the Secure Our Borders Act, which follows the Lone Star State’s lead in making it a crime to trespass into the state from another country. To avoid the veto pen of Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs, Republicans are sending the measure directly to voters on the November ballot.
Myopic Democratic political strategists see uncontrolled mass immigration as the solution to the annoyance of having to seek the public’s consent in how the country is run. Instead, they’ll invite people with no stake in the country to support them as the party handing out the freebies. The strategists expect illegal immigrants will either vote legitimately through amnesty programs at some point, or surreptitiously now, thanks to the elimination of voter identification laws.
Even Mr. Murphy has come to recognize the downside of this reckless policy. He’s gone from an open advocate of sanctuary states to quietly shipping some busloads of illegal migrants out of his state when nobody is paying attention.
It’s up to voters in November to decide whether to put an end to the madness.
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