There is a term which sums up the madness that New York is engaging in when it comeꦕs to the illegal migrants: “Luxury beliefs.”
The phrase was coined a few years back by the young social comme🔜ntator Rob Henderson. It sums up the type of performative🦄 beliefs that mostly well-off people engage in to demonstrate their “virtue.”
These days it’s not very “in” to flaunt your wealth. But flaunting your “values” is very much in. It allows a certain type of person to feel — and pose as — both morally and socially superior tꦡo the rest of us.
In our day there arဣe few luxury beliefs more glaring than encouraging, and being in favor of, mass illegal migration.
This country alre🌳ady has a complex and expensive legal immigration system. People from around the world spend thousands of dollars and even mor🎀e hours trying to negotiate it.
So why should anybody encourage a parallel system in which any𝓰body who walks acr๊oss the border illegally is also allowed to stay? Because stay they certainly do.
The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement failed to i🧔ssue summonses to more than 80% of migrants who entered the country illegally in the past year. And even among those who do get put into the process, the next case appoi🌺ntments lie a decade off. So naturally everybody stays.
Which means everybody else in the worl🅰d who wants to come will continue to come, until we break.
Perhaps there are some people who imagine that a country of 330 million people really can t﷽ake in the poor and dispoꦕssessed of the world and improve their lives. Such people clea🅰rly have no conception of the size of the rest of the world. They clearly also have no idea of the poverty that do๊minates most of the planet.
And they evidently have zero con🤡cern about the de🐼terioration which you can already see in cities across America.
But🌟 others — including many of our politicians — know all of this. They know that this country cannot absorb all the world🌃’s poor.
Yet they ��do not dare to say so. Instead they pree⛄n and pretend they we can. They promote ideas like “sanctuary cities.”
They condemn those who would secure the southern border — including the border guards. They bemoan governors like those in Texas and Arizona 𓄧who want to share the costs of open borders with the rest of t🤡he country.
There could hardl🍌y be a better example of a “luxuryꦿ belief.”
Well here’s a muchꦇ-needed reality check. One close to♋ home.
It has been estimated by the Federation for American Immigration Reform that illegal migrants will൩ cost New York State just under $10 billion this year. Only California and Texas will be spending more. This includes $4.65 billion in education-related costs and $3.5 billion for health- and welfare-related costs.
This city is currently spending about $8 million a day just to house the illegal migrants who have already come here. Mayor Adams already needs to spend two third♍s more in⛎ homeless services than de Blasio did in his last year as Mayor and three times more tha✅n his predecessor did when🐲 he came into office.
And look at what it will soon cost us.
Last month we got the projections for New York’s financial future. The state’s Division of the Budget shows that the city expects𒅌🍸 to have a budget deficit of $9.1 billion in 2025 and a deficit of $13.9 billion in 2026.
In other words, by 2025 the deficit will be roughly what the state is curr🌃ently having to pay annually just to cope with the illegal migrants who are already here.
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Which is itself a minute fract🐟ion of the numbers who are yet to come if the current border situationꦜ continues.
Just one consequence is that people are being turfed out of homeless shelters to make way for the new arrivals. Which is one explanation for why there are so many more seriously mentally ill folks r𓆉oaming the city’s streets these days.
Yet it doesn’t have to be like this. Florida, hasn’t declared itself a sanctuary state. Its elected🌳 politicians don’t encourage illegal migrants to come there. And so southern governors do not deliberately bus arrivals there.
In fact, Florida’s governor has famously bussed some of the illegal immigrants who have ended up there to other parts ofꦏ the country. To places like Martha’s Vineyard, where the💞 locals held onto their luxury beliefs for about 12 hours before bussing the arrivals out again.
Maybe as a result of being careful with their laws and the money they raise in taxes, Florida is projected to have huge budget surpluses in the coming years. Indeꦯed it is projected to have a surplus of $13.5 billion in the next fiscal year and $15.5 billion in 2025-26.
And that, right ther🔯e, is the real cost of the “luxury beliefs” that so many people in positions of power in New York hold. They get to feel good about themselves. They get to present themselves as morally better than the res💛t of us. But in the end they run out of other peoples’ money. Taxpayers’ money. Our money.
The “luxury beliefs” of a few — albeit a lot of peoꦰ☂ple in power — do have a cost. They cost the rest of us. A lot.
Unfair against Aldean
Jason Aldean has been in the news this week. Critics have claimed that his song “Try That in a Small Town” is not just racist but “pro-lynching.”
The explanation being that the song includes footage of the violence in 2020🤪 and a shot outside of a Tennessee courthouse where a lynching occurred nearly 100 years ago.
I should have thought it unlikely that a prominent country music star actually meant to refer to a lynching. More likely is tha൲t he didn’t know that bit of history, and like plenty of other people simply used an att🌳ractive backdrop.
But we do not live in generou🧸s times. Some activist types seem to view this whole country as a crime scene, a꧋nd everyone in it as a criminal. How about having a more generous view?
