Black Community News News and Commentary for Christians
No one can accuse Donald Trump of not being able to grab attention.
He lobbed his latest political hand grenade, announcing that he is considering shipping off illegals who have been arriving in droves at the U.S.-Mexico border to sanctuary cities.
These are municipalities with ordinances directing local authorizes to not cooperate with federal immigration enforcement being carried out by Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
States, cities and localities that have assumed sanctuary status are invariably Democratic and liberal strongholds.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, among the burgeoning list of Democratic presidential hopefuls for 2020, said on “Meet the Press” that he welcomes the proposal. Washington is home to a long list of sanctuary cities including Seattle and Spokane.
“We relish it,” he said. “We’re built as a state of immigrants. We’ve welcomed refugees.”
Seattle mayor Jenny A. Durkan expressed similar sentiments in a Washington Post op-ed: “We will not allow a president who continues to threaten our shared values of inclusion, opportunity, and diversity to jeopardize the health and safety of our communities.”
This is interesting to me, having just left Seattle after a several-day visit there on a speaking engagement.
My experience was just the opposite of the glowing, warm and inclusive community of opportunity conveyed by the governor and the mayor.
The most intense experience one gets in downtown Seattle is the massive, grotesque problem of homelessness.
The omnipresence of homeless individuals in Seattle’s central district is overwhelming. And one cannot escape a feeling of incongruity by the proximity of these homeless to fancy downtown restaurants.
Forbes Magazine reports the Seattle/King County area has the nation’s third largest homeless population, after New York City and Los Angeles.
According to a recent article in the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal, Seattle spends more than $1 billion annually struggling with its homeless problem, “nearly $100,000 for every homeless man, woman, and child in King County …”
And yet, the article continues, “the crisis seems only to have deepened, with more addiction, more crime, and more tent encampments in residential neighborhoods. By any measure, the city’s efforts are not working.”
The author, Christopher Rufo, a fellow at the Seattle-based Center for Wealth, Poverty & Morality at the Discovery Institute, surveys what he calls the “ideological power centers” driving the discussions in Seattle about how to deal with their homeless.
Not surprisingly, they are all on the left, and, of course, one socialist city councilwoman explains it as “how deeply dysfunctional capitalism is.” Seattle-based corporations such as Amazon, Microsoft, Starbucks and Boeing, in her analysis, “drive up housing prices, and push the working class toward poverty and despair — and, too often, onto the streets.”
The irony of this distorted analysis lies in tying it to the immigration crisis. Those massing on our southern border, trying to gain entry to our country, are pouring out from dysfunctional socialist Central American countries like Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua. Capitalism and economic freedom are the answer, not the problem.
Rufo gets to the heart of the matter, pointing out that “homelessness is a product of disaffiliation. … As family and community bonds weaken, our most vulnerable citizens fall victim to the addiction, mental illness, isolation, poverty, and despair that almost always precipitate the final slide into homelessness.”
We should appreciate that along with the disintegration of our core social institutions such as family and community is the unraveling of our country itself.
It is this very fundamental crisis, the disintegration of the institution we call the United States of America, that President Trump has recognized and is working hard to remedy.
We must restore the integrity of our national institutions and strengthen the borders that contain and protect our country.
We ought to be glad to have a president who understands our real problem and has the courage for bold action.
COPYRIGHT 2019 STAR PARKER
DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM
Photo credit: By Jonathan McIntosh – Own work, CC BY 2.5, Link
Star Parker is the founder and president of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education. Contact her at www.urbancure.org.
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The article has some very interesting points on homelessness. If you would visit Skid Row and South Los Angeles, you’ll find very, very few migrants sleeping on the street.
I am a first generation American my family comes from Spain and my first language is Spanish although I was born in the United States. My mother was a typical Spanish mother she could really hold a grudge she would not allow the language of witches (English) in our home she kept muttering something about an Armanda whatever that means. All my family came to the United States of America legally through Ellis Island I still have my mother’s Spanish passport with a United States visa stamp I do not have my father’s passport because he became a United States citizen prior to World War Two all my family climbed up the “Stairway to Heaven” on Ellis Island. For those of you who are ignorant of American history Ellis Island was not just an Immigration Inspection Station it was also a United States Public Health Service Inspection Station and Quarantine Center. If a foreigner arrived on Ellis Island and were flagged by the United States Public Health Service you had three ways of the island. First you got back on the ship and went back to your port of embarkation post haste. Second you were quarantined on Ellis Island until you were released. Third you stayed on Ellis Island until you died there were crematoriums on the island and 65% of the island are human ashes. If you died at sea your body fed the fish! Now I want you to tell me my whole family was stupid for following the laws of the United States of America or if these illegal aliens are better than my family!
Maybe she meant the Invincible Armada, a huge fleet sent by King Philip II of Spain to invade England. It was defeated by the English and Dutch fleets, and then forced to sail around the northern end of the British Isles in a terrible storm. Some ships landed on the west coast of Ireland, where their crews were killed by the Irish. It was a very traumatic experience for Spain – I remember seeing “before and after” portraits of King Philip who looked like death warmed over after the disaster.
Not sure about the witches – maybe she meant Queen Elizabeth I?
Thanks for the interesting info on Ellis Island. Your family sounds wonderful!
I think that President Donald John Trump’s absolutely inspired idea to send illegal aliens to sanctuary states and sanctuary cities is absolutely marvelous because after all they are sanctuary states and sanctuary cities and they can have all the illegal aliens their little hearts could possibly desire. Bless their dear little hearts. I get very nervous when a southern lady says “Bless their dear little hearts.” Because I live in Virginia and if a southern lady says “Why bless your dear little heart.” I am going to run for it because they are getting ready to kill me.