My last column discussed the hundreds of illegal immigrants arriving in Denver, overwhelming city services, despite Denver’s proud claim to be a sanctuary city. My point was that city and state officials were getting what they asked for, only to discover that they really didn’t like or want it after all.
As Denver is being overwhelmed with migrants, Governor Jared Polis is sending them to other cities like New York and Chicago, as reported by the Denver Post. They go further noting that, “The migrants who made their way to Denver didn’t come as part of a coordinated political effort and they aren’t being sent to other places for that purpose either.”
Who says these migrants don’t serve a political purpose? How many are or soon will be voting, and likely for Democrats who promise free food, shelter, healthcare, and education? How many illegal immigrants are counted in the census, providing additional Congressional seats and electoral votes in blue cities and states where many of these migrants settle?
The Denver Post is quite sympathetic to Governor Polis who announces, “not in my backyard”, shipping these migrants to other cities. Compare how they treated another state governor in a similar situation. This past September, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis faced a similar influx of migrants to his state, and like Polis, struggled under the financial and logistic burden of feeding and sheltering thousands of migrants that he didn’t ask for.
DeSantis sent some of the migrants to Martha’s Vineyard. The media, including the Denver Post, had a much harsher reaction to DeSantis acting in similar fashion to Polis. When they wrote about DeSantis, they used words or quotes describing his actions “fraudulent and discriminatory schemes” involving “political pawns”. The Post also quoted a Democrat sheriff who claimed the migrants had been “preyed upon” and “hoodwinked.”
Would these same derogatory claims against DeSantis be reasonably levied against Polis as they both sent migrants that they could not handle to other states? Yet notice how the Denver Post, as but one example, treated the same acts by governors of different political parties far differently.
Both governors acted reasonably in protecting the resources and residents of their respective states, but the media played politics with their actions, objectively reporting on a Democrat governor while criticizing his Republican counterpart.
The media also fails to acknowledge the upstream cause of these problems for Florida, Colorado, Texas, and many states. The Biden administration has opened the US borders to much of the world, refusing to enforce existing immigration law, funding NGOs to accept and ship migrants to states like Florida and Colorado, regardless of the ability of these states to handle this influx.
Perhaps the media could report more objectively and accurately on state governors protecting their residents and look at the real cause for this unmanageable influx of migrants into Denver and other cities.