Fitzpatrick: Migrant Crisis Forcing Small-Town Americans To Take Matters Into Their Own Hands
By James Fitzpatrick via The Daily Caller News Foundation | October 10, 2024
When the federal government willfully abandons its duty to protect the sovereignty of the nation, the consequences rarely impact the people who made the decision. The fallout rolls down hill, as they say. President Joe Biden, ensconced between his protective detail and a Delaware beach will never feel the strain on his local school district or police department. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas probably won’t have to forgo his regular squash games because the court has been turned into temporary housing.
Meanwhile, states, counties and municipalities find themselves scrambling to house, feed and provide services to previously undreamt numbers of illegal immigrants. New York Mayor Eric Adams — a Democrat — has complained publicly and bitterly about the strain on services and quality of living the flood is having on the largest city in the nation. Consider the havoc these policies are wreaking in small towns of a few thousand people. Not only is the human tide overwhelming their local resources, it’s changing the fabric of their communities. How could it not?
Lost in the media frenzy over the “cats and dogs” comment by President Trump is that Springfield, Ohio, with a population of 60,000 in 2020 has absorbed 15,000 – 20,000 Haitian immigrants since then. In the best of circumstances, increasing the population of any municipality by a third in five years will strain a community. Towns don’t anticipate or budget for an influx of thousands of foreign migrants. Schools, hospitals, emergency agencies, government offices — all funded and operating according to normal population size — are blindsided. Agencies must hire translators; forms must be printed in new languages.
And as a simple matter of public order and safety, a wave of unvetted illegal immigrants can throw a previously tight-knit community into chaos. (Or maybe, “vetted but ignored:” ICE just released jaw-dropping information about the number and crimes of thousands of illegals it knows about).
Special interests and politicians smear small-town Americans who push back against those imposing the human deluge on them as heartless, xenophobic bigots. But while these citizens are expected to quietly acquiesce and even pay more in local taxes to facilitate their own discomfiture, the government showers illegal immigrants with benefits. As soon as they enter the country, they become eligible for welfare such as TANF, SSI and Medical Assistance. The very lucky land in “sanctuary cities” that will not report their status to federal authorities. They are widely treated with respect and, for better or worse, American employers welcome them.
America is a nation of legal immigrants, and Americans are the most generous and welcoming of people. Illegal immigrants shouldn’t be here, and if they are, they should not be catered to at the expense of citizens and legal immigrants. Citizens expect their opinions and their way of life to matter to the government they fund and whose laws they obey. And unlike the elites in politics and media, they believe in American sovereignty.
Those people are beginning to realize it doesn’t have to be this way. Americans – working people who pay the bills – are fighting back. You won’t hear many of these stories in the media, but they may be a harbinger of a renewal of America.
In Saugus, Massachusetts, the school district recently proposed a policy requiring all students attending the town’s public schools to be “legal residents whose actual residence is in Saugus” and requires families that move to the town to complete the town census prior to registering their children.
Residents in Greene Township, Pennsylvania, uncovered and are fighting a plan to turn an abandoned Civil War-era school into a shelter for hundreds of migrant families. The Center to Advance Security in America submitted a FOIA request to DHS regarding the records and communications regarding this plan.
At a September city council meeting in Sylacauga, Alabama, the council president ended public comment early as residents were furious about the arrival of illegal migrants. One woman in the galley even shouted to the Council, “This is our city.” Local politicians are pledging to help and advocating for the town to DHS Secretary Mayorkas (a probably fruitless effort).
It doesn’t end with small towns. In Chicago, many residents in poor black neighborhoods, which the city government have ignored for decades, watch the city give migrants housing, food and education. The locals have started to attend city council meetings to make their opposition heard by their elected leaders.
Small towns are at the same time the strength of America and fragile ecosystems ill-equipped to resist the sort of direct attack Washington is making on them. If things go on like this, we will eventually lose the small towns. But Americans have a choice. We can stand up and remind politicians and the media that we are still here, we still count and we dissent. The end of small town America, and America at large, is not inevitable.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller.
James Fitzpatrick is the Director of the Center to Advance Security in America and a former member of the Trump Administration.
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