17 Comments
Sep 21, 2022·edited Sep 21, 2022Liked by Handwaving Freakoutery

Bingo amigo. Remember when Lori Lightfoot said she would pay for the bus ticket to Chicago? Well, Ron, send her the bill and start the buses rolling. Oh, odd to see Lori moving said aliens to the burbs (https://www.fox32chicago.com/news/burr-ridge-mayor-fires-back-at-lightfoot-pritzker-after-migrants-were-secretly-bussed-to-his-village).

I say Ron takes the H.L. Menken approach- if these people want to be a sanctuary city, let them have it, "good and hard."

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Sep 21, 2022Liked by Handwaving Freakoutery

Los Angeles may be already carrying its weight in this regard. It might well *have* 500k illegal immigrants.

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Sep 22, 2022Liked by Handwaving Freakoutery

The story remains unclear in my mind. Some TX sheriff says the illegals were recruited in San Antonio and placed on a plane to FL where they them went to Martha's Vineyard. Quite a logistic run there. How did folk from Venezuela arrive in FL? Still a way to get some press attention and get them screaming about the inhumanity when the actual inhumanity is happening right at the border. There are a lot of dead and injured people on that journey. Survivors ought to be proud and after such a gauntlet might become great citizens someday. I suspect many have a dire fear of socialism.

The Cloward-Piven strategy at work, except it isn't the 60's. These pawns are more likely to create a backlash as we face inflation's hidden taxes. It's hard to be generous and charitable if you are becoming poorer in the process. Some are beginning to notice that federal debt service is beginning to crowd out useful things.

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💬 to evenly distribute them amongst the available sanctuary cities in a fair and equitable manner

What a doozy of a table! And the following dispassionate math as well 😁 ‘An easily resolved humanitarian crisis’ indeed 👌

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That's just math.

There's no doubt there's a lot of virtue signaling, or NIMBYism in this, and that's not fair. But California is full of sanctuary cities AND all kinds of immigrants, and you don't see them participating in this.

Conservatives may consider themselves the bastions of individual rights, but what happened to "All men are created equal" and "endowed with certain inalienable rights" when it comes to immigrants, and especially asylum-seekers? These are individuals, not just numbers.

As individuals, they are trying to enter the country for many different reasons, not just because they're looking for a pool to fix. Many have family in places that aren't on your list of sanctuary cities. Many are looking for work. Many are looking to escape violence. A VERY small, but overstated, percentage are committing crimes. We have a grossly overwhelmed immigration system set up to try and piece through all this on a case-by-case basis because they ARE individuals. Under Trump the problem grew, and he in fact intentionally made it worse. Under Biden, whatever efforts were made have so far been disappointing.

An uncontrolled border is a problem, I agree with that. What would be a healthy immigration program? One which provided a control valve that balanced the rights and needs of the individual want-to-be-immigrant with the impact it may have on U.S. society, values and economy. This includes a controlled border, an expansion of work visas to match the realities of our economy, matched with penalties for hiring undocumented workers. Free education and health services for immigrants because, yes, there is a negative impact for everyone if we have an undereducated population with preventable health issues. Schooling can, in fact, help to teach American values. Proper housing for people waiting their turn with the system. Transportation and housing for whatever destination is selected.

It shouldn't be just sanctuary cities: we are one nation, and this is a collective problem. You can't go to war and send only soldiers from states that agree with the war. You can't tell an invader to attack only hawkish states. You can't prevent immigrants from leaving sanctuary cities the moment they've been dropped off. The virtue-signaling sanctuary cities would just under-house and under-serve, and make life hard enough on the immigrants they'd intentionally leave for somewhere else. If done right (i.e. according to the realistic economic need for immigrants), there'd be no need for sanctuary cities.

It's a LOT of work, one that will go wrong in many ways along the way, but if a good faith attempt is made at solving the problem, there is a real middle ground between the left and the right. No one wants to find it. De Santis is right that it's not fair for places that don't have to deal with immigration to try and take a high moral ground on the issue. He's right for forcing the issue. He's terribly wrong on his treatment of these individuals, and his simplistic "solution" to the problem. He, too, is just virtue-signaling for political gain. He has equated the problem of immigration to the problem of the garbage barge that no one wanted to accept, ignoring the inalienable rights of the "garbage" on board. I suspect there's a kind of rhetorical virtue-signaling in your offer to house immigrants that want to fix your pool. That may even be true that you'd do that, but what would you do with them once they'd finished? Would you put them back on the barge?

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Of course opening our borders would immediately solve all of our labor force problems. That’s why BJ Campbell immediately received tens (hundreds? thousands?) of applicants for his offer to “house two to four immigrants,” allowing him to selectively choose the most qualified candidates. And it’s why his swimming pool is now almost finished. Per his exacting standards.

Or maybe things are more complicated...

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