On the menu today: As Greg and I have discussed a few times on the Three Martini Lunch recently, we’re witnessing a sea change in how Democratic officeholders talk about illegal immigration and migration. Not that long ago, these officials adamantly insisted that all U.S. immigration enforcement was inherently xenophobic and unjust, and boasted of their jurisdictions’ status as “sanctuary cities” or “sanctuary states.” But in a change intense enough to induce whiplash, Democratic mayors and governors are now warning about the strain on services caused by the wave of migrants; New York City mayor Eric Adams is worrying that migrants will “destroy” his city, and New Jersey governor Phil Murphy insists his state is full and can’t accept any more migrants. What’s your head size, fellas? I need to know for your “Make America Great Again” hats.
Migration Whiplash
For roughly two decades, America’s debate about immigration followed a predictable pattern. Many figures on the right would argue that the southern border was largely insecure, that the country’s enforcement of its immigration laws was lax at best, and that many businesses had become accustomed to hiring — and in some cases, exploiting — illegal immigrants. The result was a semi-permanent underclass that facilitated human trafficking, membership in gangs, the transfer of drugs across the border, and increasing strain on limited public resources.
And a lot of people on the left would contend that even making this argument was inherently xenophobic, and that opposing illegal immigration constituted opposing immigration as a whole. Over and over again, when border states detailed the problems that came with having an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants residing within the U.S., some figure on the left, usually based in some large cosmopolitan city far from the border with Mexico, would quote Emma Lazarus’s sonnet, “The New Colossus,” which is engraved on the base of the Statue of Liberty:
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
That’s a beautiful poem articulating our pride in being a nation of immigrants, but it’s not U.S. policy. Every country on Earth enforces its borders and has an immigration policy, and almost all of them enforce their laws much more strictly than we do.
The accusation that American society is xenophobic would be laughably absurd if it wasn’t such a slur. Every year since the millennium, between 703,000, and 1.2 million immigrants have been granted legal permanent residence, also known as getting a green card. Green-card holders are permitted to live and work in the country indefinitely, to join the armed forces, and to apply for U.S. citizenship after five years — three if married to a U.S. citizen.
No other country comes close to welcoming this many legal immigrants per year — in large part because few other countries have so many people who want to live there. The United States now has roughly 50 million immigrants, or foreign-born residents; that’s lumping together legal and illegal. The next-highest is Germany, at about 15 million. In other words, the U.S. has welcomed 35 million more people from other countries than any other country on Earth. I have also heard contentions from the otherwise-sensible folks at Reason magazine that wanting any reduction in the number of legal immigrants from year to year is “anti-immigrant” or “anti-immigration,” which I think stretches those terms beyond recognition.
You don’t see many Democratic elected officials quoting Emma Lazarus’s poem anymore.
If you’ve listened to New York City mayor Eric Adams lately, you could be forgiven for thinking you’re at a Donald Trump rally, or listening to an old episode of Lou Dobbs’s show:
Let me tell you something, New Yorkers, never in my life have I had a problem that I did not see an ending to. I don’t see an ending to this. 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. One time we were just getting Venezuela. Now we’re getting Ecuador. Now we’re getting Russian-speaking coming through Mexico. We’ve got Western Africa. Now we’re getting people from all over the globe have made their minds up that they’re going to come through the southern part of the border and come into New York City.
And everyone is saying it’s New York City’s problem. Every community in this city is going to be impacted. We have a $12 billion deficit that we’re going to have to cut. Every service in this city is going to be impacted. All of us. . . .
[A]s you ask me a question about migrants, tell me what role you played. How many of you organized to stop what they’re doing to us? How many of you were part of the movement to say, we’re seeing what this mayor is trying to do and [the crisis is] destroying New York City? It’s going to come to your neighborhoods. All of us are going to be impacted by this. I said it last year when we had 15,000. And I’m telling you now, with 110,000. The city we knew we’re about to lose, and we’re all in this together. All of us.
I will remind you, New York City declared itself a “sanctuary city” during the Trump administration and set strict limits upon when city police and other agencies can cooperate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection. Now, the mayor is warning that the influx of migrants “will destroy New York City.”
Just a little south and west of New York City is the state of New Jersey, where Governor Phil Murphy declared in his election bid in 2017, “This is a moral test, black and white. . . . We will stand up to this president. We will be, if need be we’ll be a sanctuary, not just city but state. This is America. The America I know is the poem at the base of the Statue of Liberty, written by Emma Lazarus in the 1880s, we open up for all to come here, these dreamers.”
Apparently, that Emma Lazarus poem was removed from the statue sometime in the past six years, because Murphy recently declared that the state of New Jersey no longer has room for any additional migrants:
“I don’t see any scenario where we’re gonna be able to take in a program in Atlantic City or, frankly, elsewhere in the state,” Murphy said during his appearance on News 12 New Jersey on Thursday night. “We are already seeing folks in New Jersey that have probably swelled into New Jersey from New York or other locations, but you need scale, an enormous amount of federal support, resources that go beyond anything we can afford. Putting everything else aside, I just don’t see it.”
All these Democratic lawmakers were fine with insufficient border security and lax immigration enforcement, as long as the associated problems were mostly contained to border states such as Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. If the consequences of illegal immigration were primarily somebody else’s problem, these Democratic lawmakers were all for it. Now that those problems are manifesting in their communities, they sound ready to cheer at a Trump rally.
The sudden about-face by these Democratic officeholders is a de facto confession that they didn’t really think all that hard about the likely consequences of their policies.
Wait, there’s more. New York City’s public-school system has declared that while it will do everything possible to facilitate the vaccinations of migrant children attending public schools, there may not be any consequence if the children are not vaccinated by the deadline. “As long as they have an appointment, their school will work with them to keep them enrolled,” Liza Schwartzwald of the New York Immigration Coalition, told the local Fox affiliate. The city’s policies are generally common sense — a child awaiting a second dose of a two-part vaccination is cleared to attend school, etc. — but vaccinations are not optional. No one wants to see migrant children barred from getting an education, but there shouldn’t be a more lenient standard for them than for other children.
Migrants who come across the border need to be fed, housed, clothed, and provided medical care, and their children need a good education, just like every other kid around the world. Our basic humanity means that we cannot let these people starve, die of thirst, or die of disease or injury.
But the American people didn’t sign on for a policy that would welcome and care for anybody and everybody, regardless of circumstance, without any background check or ability to turn away anyone whom we deem a potential threat or problem. We have limited resources, and we have the right to prioritize the immigration of those whom we deem most likely to benefit our country — the hard-working, the educated, the entrepreneurial, the particularly skilled or ingenious.
Just what did these Democratic officials think would happen once they made statements declaring that immigration enforcement was inherently immoral and wrong, announced that cities and states would refuse to cooperate with federal immigration authorities, and made clear that those seeking asylum would be allowed to stay and live in the U.S. during the long and slow process of evaluating their asylum claims?
Jim Treacher reminds us of Joe Biden’s garbled statements on the border during the Democratic presidential-primary debate in September 2019:
“I would in fact make sure that there is, that we immediately surge to the border — all those people are seeking asylum. They deserve to be heard. That’s who we are. We’re a nation that says, ‘If you want to flee and you’re fleeing oppression, you should come.’”
Biden said he would make sure that there was a surge to the border. Promise made, promise kept.
Our Charlie Cooke points out that Adams’ s fuming about Texas busing migrants to New York City is incoherent, a desire to find a Republican scapegoat for the consequences of Democratic policies he supported:
Why should illegal immigrants be in Texas and not New York? New York City is a self-designated “sanctuary”; Texas is not. What did New Yorkers think that meant? Why are they surprised that a non-sanctuary jurisdiction such as Texas would “bus” illegal immigrants “up” to a sanctuary jurisdiction such as their own? Do they not own a dictionary? Did they think it was a joke? Was their willingness to serve as a “sanctuary” only operative when they believed that nobody would show up?
You do wonder if these East Coast big-city mayors and governors believed that border states were sitting on some giant pot of money that was available for taking care of migrants. Back in September 2022, Washington, D.C., mayor Muriel Bowser infamously complained, “We’re not a border town,” as if places such as El Paso, Texas, Nogales, Ariz., or San Ysidro, Calif., were filled to the brim with surplus resources compared to the nation’s capital.
For decades, Democrats’ policy on the border and illegal immigration was to point to the Lazarus poem and call their opponents xenophobes and racists. But the moment immigration became a strain on their local government services, Democratic officials suddenly declared there was no more room. The electorate should take heed of which figures saw the problem clearly, and which ones hand-waved away the issue with wildly unrealistic assumptions.
ADDENDUM: You’ve no doubt heard the expression that a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged by reality. The expression became terrifyingly literal for Shivanthi Sathanandan, the second vice chairwoman of the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party, who once called for the dismantling of the Minneapolis Police Department, but who was tragically, violently assaulted and carjacked Tuesday, leaving her face bloodied.
Look at my face. REMEMBER ME when you are thinking about supporting letting juveniles and young people out of custody to roam our streets instead of HOLDING THEM ACCOUNTABLE FOR THEIR ACTIONS.
Indeed.