It is now painfully clear that the Democratic Party’s top priority for America is keeping illegal immigrants, including criminals, here to suck down American jobs and resources. It is painful to watch such deterioration of a major political party.
The latest despicable behavior on this front is that Los Angeles will be distributing cash cards to illegal aliens “impacted” by President Trump’s enforcement of the nation’s federal immigration laws. The cards supposedly will be for illegal immigrants unwilling to go to their jobs for fear of being detained and deported, or those who had a wage earner in the household detained by ICE.
This, as the city faces a $1 billion shortfall that will require cutting thousands of positions.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass went to great lengths to say that the money being sent to illegals would be coming from private donors. However, the city will utilize its resources to coordinate the collection and distribution of the cash, along with establishing criteria for those who receive it.
The cards will be a “couple hundred” dollars for each reload, Bass said. The cards themselves will be distributed by pro-illegal immigrant groups such as the government-funded Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles. All of this takes city resources and employee hours, prioritizing illegals over everyone else.
LA is a sanctuary city within a sanctuary state where illegal aliens enjoy all the energy and passion of Democratic leaders, where hard-working, tax-paying Angelinos are invisible, cash cows to be milked for the Democrat grievance complex.
It gets worse. Bass’ announcement of the cash cards came during her press conference about an executive order she signed Friday that directs all city departments to “bolster protocols” and add more training for employees on how to comply with — no, not federal law and law enforcement — with the city’s sanctuary policies designed to block enforcement of federal laws.
The LA policy makes it clear that city employees and city property may not be used to “investigate, cite, arrest, hold, transfer or detain any person” for immigration enforcement purposes. City departments were tasked with getting their plans created to meet the new training and protocols within two weeks.
The heart of the matter remains the Democratic Party throwing all into the fight to defend people who broke into our country and leached off the goodness and generosity of Americans. And they will do this to the harm of their constituents.
On that point, to the surprise of no one, Los Angeles’s fiscal picture is horrendous. It is staring at a projected shortfall of $1 billion next fiscal year, which Bloomberg News attributes to declining revenues, rising costs, and overspending this year.
City leaders said they are looking at cutting “thousands” of positions to balance the budget. It is astonishing that a once-mighty city like Los Angeles, with all its amazing resources and people, has declining revenues, similar to those of Flint, Michigan, or Akron, Ohio.
Also worth noting, with more than 16,000 homes destroyed in the LA wildfires, a total of 70 building permits have been issued so far. A rational political leader would think the sooner those houses are rebuilt, the sooner property taxes will come back online for them to fill city coffers. Democrats are a lot of things, but rational is not in the stew.
The more outrageous their position, the more they double down on it. Consider all the Americans and legal workers in Los Angeles who go to work every day, are responsible citizens and residents, follow the laws, pay their taxes, and do what is right.
At the same time, their political leaders ignore them and focus entirely on protecting those who did not follow the laws. Remember, all the undocumented immigrants in LA had the opportunity to come here legally. We have a generous system. But they chose to cheat, cut in line in front of others, and sneak in.
And now the Democratic Party is only interested in protecting the cheaters and line-cutters, not those who waited their turn and followed the law. This may be what their radical base wants, but is it really what regular Angelinos want? Americans sure don’t.
From a political point of view, it just looks bananas. From a human perspective, it is disgraceful.
Rod Thomson is a former daily newspaper reporter and columnist, Salem radio host and ABC TV commentator, and current Founder of The Thomson Group, a Florida-based political consulting firm. He has eight children, seven grandchildren, and a relentless hunger to fight for America on their behalf. Follow him on Twitter at @Rod_Thomson. Email him at [email protected].
