What’s Wrong with Illegal Immigrants?

F rom Martha’s Vineyard to Cape Cod is not a typical leg of a migrant’s journey in the U.S.

It was, of course, part of the trip for 50 migrants who were flown and dropped off in Martha’s Vineyard, the tony summer spot, by Florida governor Ron DeSantis.

Social media and cable news lit up over the decision and were thick with denunciations of DeSantis, whose gigantic troll was deemed a step toward fascism in America. The documentarian Ken Burns said that the flights were “straight out of the authoritarian playbook.”

What DeSantis did is vulnerable to criticism — reports suggest that the migrants were lured into taking the trip from San Antonio under false pretenses, and they landed on Martha’s Vineyard without warning. Arizona has sent 1,800 migrants to Washington, D.C., but has been coordinating with officials on the other end, a much sounder approach.

That said, there is nothing inherently wrong with sending migrants from the places most affected by the border crisis to other states — in fact, it’s been the norm. The Center for Immigration Studies reported last year on a phenomenon it deemed “catch-and-bus.” Migrants detained at the border, often after voluntarily turning themselves in, get a permission slip from DHS to travel into the country, then a volunteer organization helps get them on a Greyhound or chartered bus wherever they want to go.

There’s no thought to how sending the illegal immigrants on to, say, Florida or New Jersey will affect communities there or whether the affected communities want them. The migrants choose a destination, and, as long as someone wires them the money for the trip, off they go.

That this is an accepted and widespread practice shows just how out of control U.S. immigration policy is — the illegal immigrants who should, by and large, be immediately deported are allowed to pick where they want to stay in the U.S., with the assistance of the authorities and volunteers.

The trips arranged under Texas governor Greg Abbott are different in degree, not in kind. The bus journeys involve dozens of migrants arriving at once, rather than trickling steadily in, and it is true that that represents a different challenge. But the trips are voluntary and, counter to the typical bus trip, free.

The Texas Tribune ran a story recently on how the Abbott program is doing migrants a favor. It noted that “immigration rights experts say the Republican governor who is working to crack down on illegal immigration is actually establishing one of the nation’s most generous publicly funded services to assist immigrants entering the country.”

Indeed, disapproving stories in the press on the buses heading north and east often feature migrants saying that they don’t mind — one way or the other, they got to the city where they wanted to go.

At the end of the day, the question is which communities get burdened by illegal migrants and who gets to decide.

NBC News ran a story in June headlined “Amid border surge, Biden admin plans to send migrants to cities deeper inside U.S., starting with L.A., say internal documents.” The subhead was “DHS officials have jokingly referred to the model as the ‘Abbott plan,’ an official said, referring to Texas Gov. Abbott’s decision to bus migrants from Texas to D.C.”

Presumably, these cities wouldn’t be volunteering for this duty.

In a similar vein, PBS ran a report last year noting, “A surge in crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border in recent months has led U.S. Border agents to drop some migrants off at sites in rural American towns, to begin their wait for court hearings. But these towns often lack the means to cope with the influx, even though aid groups have stepped in to help.”

And that’s the larger point — illegal immigration is a problem that has to be coped with, not an unalloyed benefit we hear about in the saccharine rhetoric of supporters of sanctuary cities.

Progressives have been saying that the DeSantis ploy failed because Martha’s Vineyard rallied to welcome and care for the migrants rather than exploding in a paroxysm of xenophobia. But the point is that residents had to rally, and they were dealing with a tiny, one-time event.

Imagine if it was happening all the time. This is the issue for the big-city mayors who have been getting hundreds or thousands of migrants bused from border states. There is the challenge of how to communicate with the migrants, how to provide them shelter, how to get them the health care they need, and much more. If they stay, they will draw on government benefits and public services, including the schools.

Mark Krikorian notes that Florida spent $1.6 billion in 2019 on public schooling for households headed by illegal immigrants.

This why Eric Adams and Muriel Bowser are reacting in desperation. Adams has issued an emergency declaration to procure shelter and other services for migrants. Bowser has requested that the Defense Department send in the National Guard.

The ultimate source of the crisis, of course, is the Biden administration’s willful failure at the border. The CIS estimate is that the population of illegal immigrants in the U.S. has increased by 1.35 million since Joe Biden’s inauguration. If they aren’t going home, these migrants have to go somewhere, and there’s no rule that their destinations should be convenient to the people who support the administration and policies that have created the disaster at the border to begin with.