When my family and I were driving back from Chicago, a vote of the city council was revealed that perfectly captured the hypocrisy and politics surrounding undocumented migrants in major cities. The council voted down an effort to allow voters to decide on whether Chicago should remain a sanctuary city. The measure was defeated 16-31.
During our visit, there were distribution areas of undocumented families near my mother’s house on the Northside. There were also a large number of tents now near the park for the burgeoning homeless population.
What is striking about the vote is the contrast to the prior adoption of sanctuary city measures. Starting under Mayor Harold Washington, the city council was eager to vote on measures heralding its status as a sanctuary city and calling on migrants to come to the city. Mayor Rahm Emanuel reaffirmed Chicago’s status as a haven for immigrants fearing deportation and encouraged them to view Chicago as a protected zone: “You are safe in Chicago. You are secure in Chicago. And you are supported in Chicago. This is a city of inclusion.”
It was a major article of faith on the left to pass legislation (as the city did) to obstruct federal deportation efforts while declaring the city open for migrants. Such virtue signaling was wildly popular. Then migrants started to show up in large numbers.
While the city has only received a small percentage of the migrants as opposed to smaller cities along the border, Mayor Brandon Johnson (who also once proclaimed his own pro-immigrant stance) is denouncing both the Texas and federal governments for increasing numbers of migrants in Chicago. In the meantime, protests are growing over migrant camps and construction plans.
This puts liberal politicians in a bind. They do not want to take the heat by rescinding years of sanctuary city policies while not ticking off voters who are upset with the rising costs and impact on the city.
The solution was to block any effort to give the citizens a chance to voice their view of these policies in defeating the resolution of Alderman Anthony Beale (9th) and Raymond Lopez (15th).
Notably, much of the protests have come from traditionally black precincts where locals are fed up with the increasingly crowded conditions for schools and diversion of resources. Yet, eight alderman for those precincts voted to kill the proposal.
It appears that consulting the voters was not a good option for these politicians. Democracy is only useful for certain tasks, particularly when the outcome is likely to be a rejection of long-held policies. Polls indicate that the majority of Chicagoans oppose the sanctuary city policies. Nationally, some polls show 80 percent of voters oppose sanctuary city policies.
In one controversy on an earlier vote, Mayor Brandon Johnson’s floor leader, Alderman Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (35th) was accused of physically blocking West Side Alderman Emma Mitts (37th) from entering Council chambers in an effort to prevent a quorum of alderpeople needed to vote on the resolution. He was also accused of threatening members who supported the effort to let the voter decide. He later resigned as floor leader.
While Johnson opposed the measure, he has publicly decried the cost for caring for migrants. He wants to stay technically a sanctuary city without offering quite so much sanctuary.
Johnson blamed Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s “reckless” and “dangerous” decision to send buses of migrants to Chicago despite the city proclaiming for years that it was open for migrants to come and would refuse to assist the federal government in deportation efforts.
In the meantime, Gov. J.B. Pritzker has opened up 230 hotel rooms for migrants as local citizens demand a change in state and city policies. Given the anger of such residents, the city council has found a solution: just don’t let them vote. It appears something of a trend around the country.
Democratic Party to their constituents: When we want your opinion, we’ll give it to you; good and hard.
White guilt, CRT, and the DEI shtick have run their course. Marxist blacks in America think everyone takes a knee to their self-absorbed tantrums. It appears the legal authorities of the country of Bali showed 2 black women what the rest of the world thinks of their entitled narcissism. Now Chicago has given blacks the middle finger. If blacks had focused on getting an education in public schools and gotten jobs, they would have realized Democrats only wish to keep them slaves on the welfare plantation, and they would have been masters of their own trajectories just like hard working immigrants.
These 2 black women were paraded in front of Asian media outlets in orange suits and prisoner outfits. Naturally they chose to wear a mask.
British and US women face two years in Bali jail for ‘attacking salon staff during row over prices’ – but they claim they were ‘held hostage’ when they tried to go to a cash machine to fetch money to pay
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12884903/British-women-face-two-years-Bali-jail-attacking-salon-staff-row-prices-claim-hostage.html
So they move from a mess they voted for to create and destroy another.
Stay and clean your own home before soiling another.
It just means the roads out of Illinois will continue to carry people away to other places like Indiana, Iowa, Wisconsin, Missouri and Kentucky as well as Texas , Florida and Georgia. Of course these will be the working people who can afford to get up and leave. Illinois is going to soon like Abe Lincoln’s day with small city’s and farms and a blot in the northeast part of the state that was once a world class city.
Chicago is 31% white, so it toast, forever.
This is the plain simple truth no one wants to face.
The so called vote in large cities where the “machine” is well organized and gathers every warm body, every street dweller, promising them a reward if they pull the lever or fill in the boxes as instructed have skewed the legitimate vote and created this mess.
Why did Zuckerberg spend hundreds of millions of dollars of his ill gotten gain to restructure certain key voting districts? Just to burn up cash?
The expression “chickens coming home to roost” comes to mind — and by “chickens” I don’t mean the ILLEGAL immigrants — I mean the hyperbolic rhetoric of open-borders democrats.
Anyway, it’s not surprising that a place like Chicago, which hasn’t had anything BUT a democrat mayor in living memory (last republican mayor was 92 YEARS ago), would be the place where chickens would come home to roost.
Meanwhile, good luck to anyone living in a tent through a Chicago winter. I’m sure that while freezing your ass off it will warm your heart to know that the city is putting the illegals up in hotel rooms.
The Voters of Chicago get what they voted for, this Mayor and Council. Now they suffer I feel sorry for many, seen their videos at meetings but, they voted for this Left-Wing Mayor and Council.
“The council voted down an effort to allow voters to decide . . .”
Remind me again which party is a “threat to democracy.”
For the Left, the word “democracy” is merely a means to an ends. They use it to satisfy a desire (e.g., “get Trump); and ignore it to satisfy a desire (e.g., this case). That is not a principled defense of democracy. It is a position of convenience.
“Sanctuary City” . . . yet another do good . . . feel good program which Progressives love . . . that is until the consequences kick in.
Politicians throughout the entire political system have forgotten it’s by the people for the people. Corporate big donors, PACs, political organizations are not the voters yet they run the show.
The People did vote. They voted for Johnson and at least a portion of the City Council.
That is what a representative Democracy looks like.
If an election of City council was held in 2 weeks, those city council members voting against a referendum on Sanctuary city, would get re-elected
Johnson is a teachers union thug, and everyone know he was to the left of Lori Lightfoot. Citizens of Chicago have been electing the most corrupt representation for a Century. Daley is a saint. They like it.
Me personally am not a fan of voter referendums. But most voters don’t pay attention to the people they vote for.
The most important thing to voters is how much of their own money, is promised back to them.
They are illegal aliens. Referring to them in any other way is part of the strategy to normalize invasion.
Sanctuary cities are in a trap of their own making. Thank you Governor Abbott for making Democrats accountable for their own actions.
No country allows illegals to vote! NO COUNTRY!
Very few countries allow mail-in ballots
France outlawed mail in ballots…in 1975 because of Cheating
Australia only allows mail in ballots in very limited cases!
This is not true.
EU nationals who live in another EU member State have the right to vote in local elections as well as those for the European Parliament, even if they are not a citizen of their domiciled country.
France allows vote by proxy if a voter can’t go to the polls. Up to 7% of people voted by proxy in the last presidential election. Is that the system you want to emulate?
In the 2016 elections (pre-Covid). 8.5% of Australia’s mail voting system was via mail-in ballots. Pre-Covid in the US, less than 10% of voters in a majority of US states cased their ballots by mail. Pretty similar.
Please refrain from spreading inaccurate information.
Democrat = PURE EVIL
I stand amazed that the voters of major cities deal with increased crime, horrible schools, and their sanctuary city status, when these are the outcomes of the very Democrat politicians and their policies they vote for decade after decade. They have no one to blame but themselves.
This is another example of “our democracy” at work.
@daniel
Democracy – the g-d that failed.
antonio
They are “illegal aliens” stop pandering to the left.
@anonymous
I love wearing my hat with the Mexican flag and Trump shirt. S@@tlibs see it and aren’t sure whether to shoot or salute me. They want to hate me but cannot because I’m a member of a recognized “victim” group.
antonio
You can see that we are in deep trouble when Trump begins to look like a good alternative.
We were in deep trouble long before Trump, he just had the courage to point it out and offer solutions
I swore off Trump some time ago, but then the Deep State made sure Trump was the only alternative. If that’s how the game is played, then I’ll vote Trump. Whatever misgivings one may have about Trump, he has all the right enemies. He’s one old man against the entire corrupt, deviant, disloyal, lying establishment, and they hate him just like they despise ordinary patriots like me. Bring it.
I find your commentary hard to predict. You attacked me a few days ago, and I still don’t understand why. Now you’re raising objections to Trump when it’s increasingly clear they’re determined to murder him in prison as a message to the rest of us.
Diogenes, Trump exists for a REASON and said why years ago in more than one interview at times when he didn’t consider running. Obama was supposed to be a uniter, was he? Biden was supposed to be a return to rationality, was he? Romney was the alternative to Obama, and as bad as Romney was, he was better than Obama. Trump was the alternative to Biden, and his previous years in office prove how much better a candidate he is.
We can look back further at the selection and performances of prior candidates. Yes, Trump has a big mouth, but he produces and keeps the world a much better place. Obviously, he lacks certain qualities to appeal to many, but based on history, there is a REASON he is needed. He is the only capable outsider to come into office with a passion for cleaning up the ever-deepening deep state and the inefficiencies of our government. I don’t think our present method will ever produce viable candidates that have all the qualities we are looking for.
You are making a rational decision.
Thanks, Alan. Time to get together and push back as a team.
……………..or are forbidden to.
You get what you vote for!