HOW IT STARTED:
“As mayor of our city, I would never trade away peoples’ civil rights for money,” Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg said. “That’s the only place to stand on behalf of this city that turned out 25,000 people to Capitol Mall (for the women’s march) and this city that prides itself on its incredible diversity.” Steinberg added his city would “join, if not lead, any effort to fight (the sanctuary city threat) with litigation.”
—“California leaders push back against Trump, pledge to protect immigrant ‘sanctuaries,’” the Sacramento Bee, January 25, 2017.
How it’s going: Gov. Gavin Newsom calls Ron DeSantis ‘pathetic’ on Twitter; calls for kidnapping charges after migrants dropped off in Sacramento.
—ABC7 Los Angeles.
Flashback: 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.
If I’m reading the numbers correctly in the ABC7 article, Newsom is melting down over — brace yourself — 36 illegal immigrants. Meanwhile, “The US Border Patrol has encountered approximately 1.33 million migrants in fiscal year 2023 to date,” according to CNN. Newsom’s pain could be reversed if Biden could be persuaded to change course: Democrats Discover Only The Federal Government Can Solve The Border Crisis.
Related: Leftist Hypocrisy: Failing to Criticize Environmental Disaster of Biden’s Open Border.