Connecticut mustn’t worry about illegal immigrants until they kill

By Chris Powell

Charged with the horrifying immolation murder of a woman sleeping on a subway car in Brooklyn on Dec. 22 is a man from Guatemala who entered the country illegally and was deported in 2018 but who entered illegally again and found his way to New York, where subsidies for illegal immigrants are especially attractive.

Since prior to the murder the man appears not to have been charged with any serious crime, Connecticut Attorney General William Tong and most other state Democratic leaders would have defended his right to violate immigration law if he had been in Connecticut prior to Dec. 22. Indeed, that’s the state Democratic position on all illegal immigrants — that people who enter the country illegally and reach Connecticut should be exempt from immigration law until they commit a serious crime.

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But under the Democratic national administration’s policy of open borders, supported by Tong and most leading Connecticut Democrats, the government can’t know much if anything about people who enter illegally until they do something terrible here and are apprehended. No matter if they were criminals in their home country; once they get here we’re not supposed to know. 

Protecting the country against those who have bad intent and are unable to support themselves honestly is the main purpose of immigration law. Or it was the main purpose prior to the Democratic Party’s realization that it could gain permanent control of the U.S. House of Representatives by packing Democratic-leaning metropolitan areas with millions of illegal immigrants who, even if barred from voting, still would be counted in the federal census and cause creation of many more solidly Democratic congressional districts at the expense of competitive and Republican districts.

The Democratic response to the objection to admitting millions of people without individual evaluation is that most illegal immigrants won’t commit crimes and that illegal immigrants generally are less likely to commit crimes than the native-born. 

That is, Democrats maintain that since 51% of illegal immigrants probably won’t commit crimes, there’s no need to worry about the other 49% — no need to fear that some who have entered the country illegally may be awaiting instructions from hostile powers and scouting the country’s thousands of soft targets, like a street crowded with revelers in New Orleans and the Trump hotel in Las Vegas, last week’s scenes of mayhem.

The Democratic rationalization for open borders is ridiculous but it may keep working politically until news organizations end their complicity and challenge those who make it.

The Brooklyn murder case highlights another major problem caused by open borders policy that Connecticut Democrats overlook. Both the woman murdered on the subway car in Brooklyn, who was a U.S. citizen, and the illegal immigrant charged with burning her to death appear to have been living in homeless shelters. 

The cost of housing has soared in the last few years, a subsidiary cost of open borders, since government made no provision for the millions who entered the country illegally and were exempted from deportation. Over the last year homelessness is estimated to be up 18% nationally and 13% in Connecticut. 

It’s not just the increase in homelessness. Rising housing costs have reduced living standards for millions of working-class people.

Many Democrats in Connecticut prattle about the housing shortage while overlooking their party’s responsibility for it with open borders and obstructing deportations except for serious criminals. The state is estimated to have well more than 100,000 illegal immigrants, many receiving state government medical insurance and driving down the wage base by working illegally at substandard wages.

Ironically the country easily could afford liberal immigration policy if it required immigrants to show familiarity with American history, fluency in English, and commitment to a democratic and secular culture, and to forswear welfare benefits for 10 years. 

In that case the United States might have a better class of immigrants than the native-born, who increasingly are uneducated and unskilled and take their country for granted. But that’s a different government policy failure.

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Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)

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