Chicago Residents Revolt at City Meeting After Learning How Many Migrants Are Coming to Stay
As the number of illegal immigrants flooding across our southern border increases by the day, if not the hour, residents of Chicago are blasting their city leaders for allowing thousands of illegals to stay in abandoned schools, police stations and city park facilities without bothering to consult local residents.
The population of migrants being sent to the Windy City has exploded, especially since Texas, Florida and others have had just about enough of suffering the brunt of President Joe Biden’s dangerously lax border policies and began sending busloads of them to other states.
Chicago is finally finding its sanctuary city policies are bringing severe heartburn as the rise in the number of illegals, many of whom are criminals, has risen so sharply that residents are becoming alarmed at how it might affect their quality of life.
City officials have run out of money to deal with the influx as budget dollars set aside by the city as well as Illinois state aid is practically gone and federal aid has yet to really materialize despite Biden’s obsession with casting aside our immigration laws and throwing the border open.
Time has already run out, as far as 49th Ward Alderwoman Maria Hadden is concerned.
“I’m hoping to really see a turn because it’s show time, the emergency is here after May 12th, we will see a surge of tens of thousands of people at the border we don’t have time,” Hadden said last week, according to WLS-TV in Chicago.
Alderwoman Michelle Harris added the illegals might be a crisis for City Hall, but she does not want it to become a crisis for her constituents.
“While this may constitute an emergency for the city of Chicago it does not constitute an emergency for me and the 8th Ward,” Harris said.
The city has been stuffing hordes of illegals in every available corner, including inside police stations, and it’s running out of space.
One solution that has been floated is the idea of opening an abandoned South Shore school building to house the migrants.
But at a recent meeting, South Shore residents voiced opposition to the plan, saying their quality of life would suffer if the city followed through with that idea.
“We are not inhumane to people’s plight. But we are looking at the reality of the world we live in and we think it’s irresponsible to take a people whose community is already in disarray and place additional people without resources,” said Brian Mullins of the Black American Voter Project, according to WLS.
Worse, local community leaders have been working since 2015 to get the building repurposed for other uses to benefit the community but have been met with little interest from both City Hall and Chicago school officials. Now they feel like they are being slapped in the face with the plan to house illegals there.
“We’re very active and engaged in this community and it just doesn’t fit well to have a group of migrants to descend on this particular area because it’s a transient situation. We have stability here. We’re not comfortable with the crime on 75th, but to add migrants to that, it’s overwhelming,” said Natasha Dunn of the Black Community Collective.
Then there is another issue that these residents see as a second slap in the face: the allocation of police resources to protect the migrants.
Chicago is suffering a huge spike in crime, especially murders, and residents fear that a massive influx of jobless illegals with no money, no homes and no prospects will only add to the dangers residents face in their everyday lives.
Crime has bedeviled the area for years. South Shore leaders have been calling for a larger police presence for a long time but have been denied at every level of city leadership.
Yet now, City Hall is claiming there will be an increased presence to safeguard the illegals once the school is opened to house them.
“All of a sudden we have deep pockets for people who don’t pay taxes,” said one South Shore resident who attended the meeting. “I understand helping people, but you start with your own home.”
Another wondered why the homeless population in the city is being ignored in favor of illegal immigrants.
The other plans to house illegals are no better.
The city said it is also considering housing illegals at Chicago Park District field houses, but none of the city’s residents who use the facilities for day care services, recreation and other programs had been told that they will have to deal with groups of illegals lounging around the centers.
Residents fear that the programs they rely on will be negatively impacted or even shut down as the park district caters to the migrants.
Meanwhile, Chicago is sticking to the policies that make it a so-called sanctuary city.
“As a welcoming city, Chicago continues to receive new arrivals and tend to their immediate needs,” city officials said in a statement, according to WLS.
“We are in the midst of a national humanitarian crisis and have been collaborating with City departments, Alderpeople, community-based organizations, and community leaders to identify temporary respite sites, including Chicago Park District and other public facilities, where new arrivals can wait for shelter placement,” it said. “This is part of the City’s efforts to prepare for an expected influx of new arrivals.”
It should be remembered that Chicagoans are whining about several thousand illegals burdening them over the last year. Meanwhile, some border cities and counties in places such as Arizona, Texas and New Mexico are dealing with thousands of migrants a day.
This is all so typical of leftists and Democrats who make rules to virtue signal about how wonderful they are when those rules have little real impact on their lives, but then moan when the crisis grows so bad that it is finally redounding on them.
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