Tuesday, January 9, 2024
Year : 1, Issue : 19
The city’s migrant crisis has become “a specter that demagogues can use as the threat du jour,” says City Councilman Justin Brannan. “It used to be ‘defund the police’ or bail reform. Now this is the new thing they can divide and conquer on.”
Count this as yet another retread of the “Republicans pounce” gimmick: Shoot the messengers.
Brannan (D-B’klyn) offered up his “wisdom” in a Politico piece blaming Mayor Adams and The Post for “ceaseless, dire messaging” on the border, which is “threatening Democrats in a pivotal election year.”
This much is true: A whopping 84% of New Yorkers consider the influx of migrants a serious problem.
But pretending the issue is messaging, not President Biden’s policies, is a delusional farce. Democratic insiders like Brannan, and their media enablers, may buy it.
But the ones making Democrats look bad are Democrats (from Biden on down), who keep pretending everything is just fine (or, even more laughable, that the real problem is that Republicans won’t agree to just legalize everybody).
Adams doesn’t have the luxury of staying silent: The city has coughed up nearly $2 billion on migrants, with no end in sight as thousands more stream in every week.
Like many other big-city mayors, he has two choices: Send up a distress signal and hope for rescue or fall in line and watch your city buckle under the flood.
Yet New Yorkers don’t need Adams to flag the migrant crisis; they can see the effects in the overflowing hotels and shelters in every borough and the looming cuts to their city services.
If Republicans sweep in 2024, it will be because Democrats refused to stand up to Biden and demand change to unsustainable immigration policies.
And think twice before comparing the migrant crisis to crime.
