Joe Schaeffer
Political Columnist at LibertyNation.com Joe Schaeffer is a veteran journalist with 20+ years’ experience. He spent 15 years with The Washington Times, including 8+ years as Managing Editor of the newspaper’s popular National Weekly Edition. Striving to be a natural health nut, he considers staring at the ocean for hours to be an act of political rebellion.
As Americans struggle mightily to cope with the buckling effects of inflation on food, gasoline, and other necessities, the benefits for illegal migrant newcomers keep piling up. The state of Illinois is funding temporary housing for migrants, providing up to $9,000 in rental assistance over six months. How many Americans could use a $9,000 housing stipend right about now?
“That rent lasts for six months and ideally people would have started their legal process, secured legal work authorization and be able to sustain that apartment. And so the cost, or I guess the payment toward the landlord, is based on market rate; it’s based on the configuration of the [apartment] – how many rooms, where it’s located – all those things. And so it varies from place to place,” Cristina Pacione-Zayas, chief of staff to Democrat Mayor Brandon Johnson, told the Chicago’s Fox 32 TV station October 13.
As is so often the case, Democrat notions of the ‘ideal’ results of their feckless policies are failing to materialize. In New York City, where illegal migrants have become a crushing burden on the blue-run government, the new arrivals are simply not working.
‘Going Nowhere Fast’
“A mere 2,100 migrants in the Big Apple’s care have applied for work permits – with not a single one yet to receive federal approval, city officials admitted [on Oct 18],” The New York Post reports. “City Hall also still has no solid figure for how many of the more than 40,000 adult asylum seekers it is housing are even eligible to legally work here, officials conceded at a city council hearing.”
In other words, taxpayer money is being lavished upon foreigners with no realistic plan of them ever being able to take care of themselves.
“The revelation frustrated even Mayor [Eric] Adams’ fellow Democrats on the council,” the paper noted. “This migrant strategy is going nowhere fast: We have to secure the border,” Council Member Robert Holden acknowledged.
“The Biden administration has warned US banks and other financial institutions that they can’t reject illegal immigrants’ credit applications based solely or predominantly on their immigration status,” The Epoch Times reported Oct 16. “The Department of Justice and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said in a recent statement that rejecting illegal immigrants for credit cards and various types of loans just because they are noncitizens is unlawful.”
“Lenders should not deny people the opportunity to take out a loan to buy a home, build their businesses or otherwise pursue their financial goals because of unlawful bias and without regard to their actual ability to repay,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division stated. Granting such lending opportunities to those residing in this country illegally will undoubtedly lead to astronomically increased default rates. The inevitable accompanying rise in lending costs will naturally fall on the heads of legal American citizens seeking these services. It’s another way to soak the US taxpayer in support of an illegal immigration plague that has had profound negative effects on their social, cultural and economic well-being.
Migrant Price Tag Heading to Pluto
The question weary Americans should be asking is not where it ends – that’s readily apparent for anyone who can do basic math – but when. The end, of course, comes when the sustainability of America’s governance and financial system runs out.
“By June 2024, [New York City] anticipates, as many as 70,000 immigrants will be receiving food, shelter, and other services, at a cost over the next two years of several billion dollars. That includes nearly $750 million in health-care and hospital payments in 2024 alone,” Steven Malanga details at City Journal.
Chicago Democrats are starting to realize that their empty platitudes about welcoming the world to America are unaffordable, something any responsible adult should have realized from the beginning. Malanga writes:
The Windy City has quickly found itself swamped. Early in 2023, outgoing mayor Lori Lightfoot said that the city had spent more than $50 million on housing, food, and other services for the newcomers – which it wanted the federal government to reimburse. Several months later, the city allocated another $51 million for immigrant services …
Debates over the spending got heated when some city officials, representing low-income districts, balked at the costs. “The problem here is, in the frustration, we all want to yell and point fingers at Texas,” one councilman said. “That’s not right. We declared ourselves a sanctuary city.” Chicago officials were angered when the state turned down their request for more aid, with Illinois [Democrat] governor JB Pritzker noting that [state capital] Springfield had already spent $260 million on the new arrivals in the last year.
But due to all the built-in incentives put in place over decades of Democrat pandering on illegal immigration without regard to the inevitable consequences, the end of the crisis is nowhere in sight. “If you build it, they will come,” [the] New York Republican Staten Island city councilman observed in August of the Big Apple’s largesse.
“There is no more room in New York. Our hearts are endless, but our resources are not,” Mayor Adams exclaimed during his ballyhooed trip to Central America earlier this month.
“I don’t care if the place is crowded,” Venezuelan Genso Perez told UK newspaper The Daily Mail as Adams spoke nearby. “I want to be part of the crowd. I want to be one of many.”
Throwing more taxpayer money is not going to get Democrats out of this pickle anymore. And all the while, American citizens wince in pain as they stagger out of their local supermarket with their meager groceries for the week.