New York City was built on the endeavour of immigrants… but is now hit by a $10billion migrants crisis
LIFE can sometimes come at you awfully fast.
In America this week, people learned of a far-left politician who had until recently been committed to “dismantling” police departments across America.
This week, sadly, Shivanthi Sathanandan was the victim of a violent carjacking which left her beaten and bloodied in front of her two young children.
So she has been calling on police to stop these violent criminals and thanking her local force for their help.
But if that seems a change of tune, it is nowhere near as important as the change in New York City.
For years, Democrat (left-wing) politicians there have been grandstanding about New York being a “sanctuary city” for immigrants.
After all, it is a city built on the endeavour of immigrants.
Between 1892 to 1954 nearly 12million arrived on Ellis Island, just across from the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbour.
Like left-wing politicians across the US, the New York lot have said they are not like the “racist” states which are trying to enforce the law.
They’re not like those terrible hicks down in Arizona and Texas who have illegal migrants flooding in by the thousands every day and don’t like it.
No, these left-wing politicians up north like to show that they are better than that.
All the while hoping that they never have to suffer with the consequences of illegal immigration.
They are like the politicians in London’s Islington who have no sympathy for the people of Dover and other communities where illegal migrants pour into this country.
And so the Left set up “sanctuary cities” like New York, in which they said they would welcome and house any and all immigrants.
That includes ones who go through the grinding official process, obviously.
But it also includes migrants who have broken the law to come to America illegally.
New York Mayor Eric Adams has long been a supporter of sanctuary cities.
When running for Mayor less than two years ago he promised New York “should protect our immigrants — period”, and that New York would “remain a sanctuary city” under his administration.
He has long argued for non-citizens to have the right to vote in New York elections.
And in June 2021 he released a plan in which he argued that the New York Police Department should have any contact with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) “severely restricted” to protect immigrants.
So what a difference a couple of years makes.
Because in the last year Republican governors in the border states have decided to take people like Mayor Adams at their word.
Instead of having to take millions of people in each year and cope with them on their own, the southern governors started bussing the illegals north.
Specifically to places such as New York that had boasted that they would always accept illegal immigrants.
When the first buses came, there was outrage and jubilation.
Then as the hundreds became thousands, the city started to struggle.
By the time the number reached 5,000 or so, the city had no more homeless shelters and started putting migrants up in luxury hotels.
One such hotel had a rooftop pool and would be out of the price range of your average New Yorker.
But the illegal migrants got put up there and at other hotels, until the city started running out of hotels too.
For a city of more than eight million people, you might have thought these numbers would be insignificant.
But they aren’t.
The city has now been sent more than 112,000 migrants and it is buckling under the strain.
The cost of the migrants who have arrived so far this year is expected to be around $10billion this year.
That includes $4.65billion in education costs for migrants who have brought children and $3.5billion on health and welfare.
All for people who have broken into the country and paid nothing at all into the system.
The real cost of this has finally hit home.
This week Mayor Adams told a town hall meeting: “I don’t see an ending to this. This issue will destroy New York City. Destroy New York City.
“We’re getting 10,000 migrants a month . . . now we’re getting people from all over the globe that have made their minds up that they’re going to come through the southern part of the border and come into New York City.”
Well, I don’t like to crow, but to Mayor Adams many of us can only say: “We told you so.”
What is it about some politicians that they don’t see this?
That if you cut police numbers, crime will go up.
That if you stop enforcing your borders, the cost will come to everyone some day.
If New York is now about to hit the wall, Mayor Adams can congratulate himself for helping drive it there.
Ideas, and grandstanding, do have consequences.
Who could have guessed?