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It’s time woke politicians faced the consequences of their own beliefs

In America, supporters of illegal immigration are finally seeing the reality on their own doorsteps

Other challenges come and go, but migration remains one of the greatest challenges of our age. Never has it been easier for people in the developing world to learn what life is like in the developed world. Never has it been easier or cheaper to travel. And rarely, if ever, have the world’s prosperous nations been so unconcerned about the erosion of their borders.

In recent days, this fact has been back in the headlines as record numbers of illegal migrants have been crossing the English Channel. The numbers have kept going up and up in recent years because the British Government did not want to get a grip on the situation or even treat it especially seriously. So long as the numbers were merely thousands of people a year rather than tens of thousands, Boris Johnson and others hoped that the British public would not notice. They could keep putting migrants up in hotels and boarding houses, push the problem along for another day and occasionally talk tough while doing little.

The United States is in a similar situation, though the scale is inevitably different. While the UK last week reached a record height of almost 1300 illegals in a day, the US has this year been averaging 5,000 illegal migrants a day breaking their way across the southern border from Mexico. Like their counterparts trying to get into Britain, these illegal migrants head to the US confident that although the trip can be dangerous, once they are in they will get to stay. The Biden administration, like our Conservative Government, has hoped that the American people would not notice the surge. To the extent that they have bothered about it, they have allowed the southern states to absorb the problem. Much as communities in towns like Dover are expected to bear the cost of mainly young men from the third world milling about their towns, the Democrats in the US believed that states like Texas and Arizona could bear the brunt of their influx.

Cities like New York and Washington DC even had the audacity to declare themselves “sanctuary cities” – cities where “no human being is illegal” to quote one of the many asinine slogans of the open-borders Left. Miles away from the problem, politicians in these cities could glow in the sense of moral superiority that comes from passing off other peoples’ problems as your own.

But in recent months, the southern states have decided to change the game. The Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, decided to share the challenge around. In recent months he started bussing illegal migrants north, sending them by bus to New York, DC and other cities that encourage illegal migration without ever really suffering its consequences. To date, almost 5,000 people have been sent to New York. Which, as mentioned, is an average day’s arrivals. But oh how the New York politicians have screamed. The Democrat mayor, governor and others have all accused the Texas governor of playing politics. What are they to do with all of these unhoused new arrivals, they ask?

It is a question that the southern states have asked for many years, whilst garnering very little sympathy from Democrats in New York and Washington. Now, these cities are having to answer the question for themselves.

In New York, the local authorities have realised that the arrivals have to have somewhere to live. Even after just a couple of thousands migrants arrived in the city the New York housing authorities found themselves at breaking point. Now, the authorities are having to put the new arrivals up at a hotel just off Time Square. Local backlash has been swift. Why should New York – which already has enough of a homelessness problem of its own – be putting fresh arrivals up in hotels? Where is the sense of first come first served? How many queues can these illegals illegally jump?

The city of Washington is in a similar quandary. As Arizona has joined Texas in bussing the illegals out of the state, the Democrats in DC are as angry as their counterparts in New York about the policy. Washington’s Democrat mayor has called on Joe Biden to mobilise the National Guard to deal with the problem in her city. Like New York, DC already has a terrible homelessness problem which increased over the period of Covid. Most green spaces in the city – from Union Station onwards – are filled with tents. The nation’s capital really does look like it is a rotting homeless encampment.

Now the migrants from the border are being added to the mix. More than 7,200 migrants have been bussed to DC from Texas in recent months and around 1500 from Arizona. DC mayor Muriel Bowser is just one of those to complain. “We are not a border city,” she said last week. “Our infrastructure is set to focus on DC residents.” Quite. But what does she imagine the infrastructure of “border cities” should intend to focus on?

Of course, the actions of the governors of Arizona and Texas are not only legitimate and legal, they are wholly justified. If politicians in DC and New York want to encourage illegal migration – as they do – then they should be prepared to pay the costs, in financial and all other terms.

Because it is so easy to talk about how awful borders are if you do not need to protect them. It is so easy to blur the line between legal and illegal migration if you are not in charge of trying to work out a fair way to distribute limited resources in your city. The actions of Texas and Arizona are in fact a brilliant way to bring the realities of illegal migration to the doorsteps of the people who encourage it.

Perhaps politicians on the south coast of England could concentrate on instituting a similar policy here? Islington already has its fair share of problems, but why not bus all the latest arrivals into the borough on a daily basis? Let the left-wing politicians in our country who do not believe in borders bear the consequences of their own beliefs.

Let them meet every morning the growing reality of a country in which thousands of people enter illegally each day. Let them see the poverty, the hopeless, the black-market underbelly, the criminal gangs and much more. Bring it home to them, and see how they like it when a problem they think of in the abstract becomes very, very real.

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