HOW IT STARTED:
“We are a city that is a sanctuary city. We have immigrants from all over the world who call Chicago their home. They’ll continue to do that, and we’re going to continue to make sure that this is truly a welcoming community for those immigrants and we want them to come to the city of Chicago.”
—“Chicago Mayor-elect Lori Lightfoot Says Immigrants ‘Welcome’ Despite Donald Trump’s Remarks on Sanctuary Cities,” Newsweek, April 13th, 2019.
How it’s going: Texas sends buses of migrants to Chicago for first time, dropped off at train station.
—Fox News, tonight.
Earlier: Sanctuary Cities Seethe as Illegal Immigrants Actually Arrive.
The surest sign that public policies are simply virtue signals is when the messages don’t cost anything. The easiest way to tell when that signal starts to fail is to watch politicians flounder as the costs start to rise and voters demand relief.
It was free—and meaningless—for progressive churches to post banners calling themselves “nuclear free zones” during the Reagan era. Their dwindling congregations loved it. It was free, after George Floyd‘s murder, to post woke catechism signs on your front lawn, proclaiming “In this house, we believe: Black Lives Matter, women’s rights are human rights, no human is illegal” and so on. Maybe the neighbors gave you high-fives. And for years it has been free for deep-blue cities to proclaim themselves “sanctuaries” for illegal immigrants. That’s changing now that voters want some sanctuary for themselves.
Changes like this happen when voters realize the old virtue signals actually entail serious costs—and that they will have to pay them. That is exactly what’s happening in New York City and Washington D.C. now that Texas governor Greg Abbott is sending those cities a few busloads of illegal immigrants from his state.
These progressive bastions were silent when the Biden administration flew planeloads of illegal immigrants to suburban airports in the middle of the night. TV coverage was prohibited, and the arrivals were secretly dispersed. Abbott’s buses, by contrast, arrive downtown greeted by local TV crews. Now you can hear the politicians screech.
Lightfoot’s reaction to her bluff being called will be fun to watch.
UPDATE: And here we go! Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot blasts migrant buses from Texas as ‘racist.’
Chicago’s progressive mayor insists she welcomes being the latest Democratic destination for busloads of border crossers, as she accused Texas Gov. Greg Abbott of being “racist” and the Trump administration of “human cruelty.”
Does she know who the current president is?
(Updated and bumped.)