Connect with us
[bsa_pro_ad_space id=12]

Economy

‘What constitutes a border crisis?’ Sanctuary cities have found out

Published

5 months ago

8 minute read

Migrants and migrant bedding inside O’Hare International Airport in Chicago.                  Dan McCaleb | The Center Square

From The Center Square

By

Yeah, you liked them when it wasn’t your problem because you’re not a border state. And then when they show up in Chicago and New York, you’re like ‘What the [expletive] are we going to do with these people?’”

In March 2021, the Los Angeles Times published a story with a headline that asked, “What constitutes a border crisis?”

The story quoted then House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy as saying, “There is no other way to claim it than a Biden border crisis.”

Then the LA Times asked, “But is it a crisis?”

Just a month later in April 2021, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio released a statement about his city being a sanctuary city.

“New York City is proud to be a welcoming and inclusive city for immigrants,” de Blasio said at the time.

The debate in the U.S. on migrants took off in April 2022 when Texas Gov. Greg Abbott decided to take a stand against President Joe Biden and what Abbott called an open border policy.

Abbott stated that Biden’s repeal of Title 42 – a pandemic-era policy that allowed the government to quickly expel arriving asylum seekers – had created an “unprecedented surge of illegal aliens” into the country with as many as 18,000 apprehensions a day.

Abbott said that Texas border towns were being overrun by migrants and were overwhelmed. His solution was to bus many of the arriving migrants to sanctuary cities across the U.S.

In August 2022, when the first bus of migrants leaving Texas arrived in New York, Abbott was clear why he had his state paid for the trip. New York had a new mayor by then.

“New York City is the ideal destination for these migrants, who can receive the abundance of city services and housing that Mayor Eric Adams has boasted about within the sanctuary city,” Abbott stated in a news release. “I hope he follows through on his promise of welcoming all migrants with open arms so that our overrun and overwhelmed border towns can find relief.”

And just over a year later, New York Gov. Kathleen Hochul was on CNN in September 2023 pleading with immigrants to “go somewhere else.”

How it has played out was not lost on liberal comedian Bill Maher.

“Could everyone just stop the posturing?” Maher said on a July 2023 podcast with Sharon Osbourne. “Don’t pretend that you love migrants so much and then when we send them to you, you don’t like them. You know? You’re full of [expletive]. And we can see that. Yeah, you liked them when it wasn’t your problem because you’re not a border state. And then when they show up in Chicago and New York, you’re like ‘What the [expletive] are we going to do with these people?’”

New York wasn’t the only destination for Abbott’s buses. He also targeted other sanctuary cities, such as Washington, D.C, Chicago and Denver.

The New York Times published an article in July 2023 that had a headline that asked, “Is Texas’ Busing Responsible for the Migrant Crisis Across Cities?”

On June 14, Abbott’s office stated that it had bused 119,200 migrants to six sanctuary cities since August 2022. That included 45,700 migrants to New York City and 36,900 migrants to Chicago since August 2022. There were also 19,200 migrants bused to Denver since May 2023 and 12,500 migrants bused to Washington D.C. since April 2022.

But Abbott wasn’t alone in busing migrants from the border to locations throughout the country. The Democratic-run city of El Paso also bused migrants north.

Democratic Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs stated in September 2023 that Arizona was “overwhelmed” by the flow of migrants into her state. Arizona spent $10.5 million transporting 10,247 migrants out of state as of September 2023.

That’s just part of a bigger surge of migrants into the U.S. Since Biden took office in January 2021, about 12 million illegal border crossings have been documented, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data and a compilation of “gotaway” data obtained from border agents by The Center Square. Gotaways is the official CBP term to describe those who illegally crossed the border between ports of entry but who were not apprehended. CBP does not publicly release “gotaway” data.

The increase in migrants has hammered the budgets of sanctuary cities.

Washington, D.C. created an Office of Migrant Services with an initial start-up cost of $10 million in 2022. In 2025, the city budgeted $39 million for that office.

Chicago has spent $299 million on migrants since 2022, according to a March 2024 report by the Illinois Policy Institute, and that does not include the hundreds of millions of dollars state taxpayers have paid for costs such as migrant health care.

New York City Mayor Adams said in August 2023 the migrant crisis may cost his city $12 billion over three years.

The city of Denver stated in April 2024 that the increase in migrants has cost it $63 million.

The cost to taxpayers in the state of Texas was $13.4 billion in 2023, according to the Federation For American Immigration Reform. Only California had a higher cost at $30.9 billion.

Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation For American Immigration Reform, said Abbott’s busing strategy has worked.

“His busing policy exposed the hypocrisy of many sanctuary jurisdiction politicians who extolled the virtues of mass immigration regardless of its legality, but are not so happy when they actually have to deal with the real impact of large numbers of migrants,” Mehlman said in an email to The Center Square. “So long as it was someone else’s problem, they were happy to virtue signal and criticize others. Once it became their problem, they demanded that Abbott and others stop sending them migrants. For years, these sanctuary proponents claimed that illegal aliens were a benefit to the country, but are now demanding federal assistance to manage to cover their costs, exposing the fact that illegal immigration imposes huge fiscal costs.”

Managing Editor

Related Topics:

Todayville is a digital media and technology company. We profile unique stories and events in our community. Register and promote your community event for free.

Follow Author

More from this author
Business / 2 hours ago

Companies Scrambling To Respond To Trump’s ‘Beautiful’ Tariff Hikes

conflict / 4 hours ago

Biden Caves, Allows Ukraine To Use US Missiles For Long-Range Strikes Inside Russia

Daily Caller / 4 hours ago

Smugglers Reportedly Telling Migrants To Hoof It Toward Border Before Trump Takes Office

Economy

COP 29 leaders demand over a $1 trillion a year in climate reparations from ‘wealthy’ nations. They don’t deserve a nickel.

Published on November 16, 2024

By

From Energy Talking Points

The injustice of climate reparations

COP 29 is calling for over $1 trillion in annual climate reparations

  • A major theme of COP 29 is that the world should set a “New Collective Quantified Goal” wherein successful nations pay poor nations over $1 trillion a year to 1) make up for climate-related harm and 2) build them new “green energy” economies. In other words, climate reparations.¹
  • What would $1 trillion a year in climate reparations mean for you and your family?Assuming the money was paid equally by households considered high income (>$50 per day), your household would have to pay more than $5,000 a year in climate reparations taxes!²
  • Climate reparations are based on two false assumptions:1. Free, wealthy countries, through their fossil fuel use, have made the world worse for poor countries.

    2. The poor world’s main problem is dealing with climate change, which wealth transfers will help them with.

But free, fossil-fueled countries have made life better for poor countries

  • Free, wealthy countries, through their fossil fuel use, have not made the world worse for poor countries—they have made it far, far better.Observe what has happened to global life expectancies and income as fossil fuel use has risen. Life has gotten much better for everyone.³
  • The wealthy world’s fossil fuel use has improved life worldwide because by using fossil fuel energy to be incredibly productive, we have 1) made all kinds of goods cheaper and 2) been able to engage in life-saving aid, particularly in the realms of food, medicine, and sanitation.
  • Without the historic use of fossil fuels by the wealthy world, there would be no super-productive agriculture to feed 8 billion humans, no satellite-based weather warning systems, etc. Most of the individuals in poor countries would not even be alive today.

Free, fossil-fueled countries have made the poor safer from climate

  • The wealthy world’s fossil fuel use has been particularly beneficial in the realm of climate.Over the last 100 years, the death rate from climate-related disasters plummeted by 98% globally.

    A big reason is millions of lives saved from drought via fossil-fueled crop transport.⁴
  • The “climate reparations” movement ignores the fact that the wealthy world’s fossil fuel use has made life better, including safer from climate, in the poor world.This allows it to pretend that the poor world’s main problem is dealing with rising CO2 levels.

The poor world’s problem is poverty, not rising CO2 levels

  • The poor world’s main problem is not rising CO2 levels, it is poverty—which is caused by lack of freedom, including the crucial freedom to use fossil fuels.Poverty makes everything worse, including the world’s massive natural climate danger and any danger from more CO2.
  • While it’s not true that the wealthy world has increased climate danger in the poor world—we have reduced it—it is true that the poor world is more endangered by climate than the wealthy world is.The solution is for the poor to get rich. Which requires freedom and fossil fuels.⁵

Escaping poverty requires freedom and fossil fuels

  • Every nation that has risen out of poverty has done so via pro-freedom policies—specifically, economic freedom. 

    That’s how resource-poor places like Singapore and Taiwan became prosperous. Resource-rich places like Congo have struggled due to lack of economic freedom.

  • Even China, which is unfree in many ways (including insufficient protections against pollution) dramatically increased its standard of living via economic freedom—particularly in the realm of industrial development where it is now in many ways much freer than the US and Europe.
  • A crucial freedom involved in rising prosperity has been the freedom to use fossil fuels.Fossil fuels are a uniquely cost-effective source of energy, providing energy that’s low-cost, reliable, versatile, and scalable to billions of people in thousands of places.⁶
  • Time and again nations have increased their prosperity, including their safety from climate, via economic freedom and fossil fuels.Observe the 7X increase in fossil fuel use in China and India over the past 4 decades, which enabled them to industrialize and prosper.⁷
  • For the world’s poorest people to be more prosperous and safer from climate, they need more freedom and more fossil fuels.The “climate reparations” movement seeks to deny them both.
  • The wealthy world should communicate to the poor world that economic freedom is the path to prosperity, and encourage the poor world to reform its cultural and political institutions to embrace economic freedom—including fossil fuel freedom.Our leaders are doing the opposite.

Climate reparations pay off dictators to take away fossil fuel freedom

  • Instead of promoting economic freedom, including fossil fuel freedom, wealthy climate reparations advocates like Antonio Guterres are offering to entrench anti-freedom regimes by paying off their dictators and bureaucrats to eliminate fossil fuel freedom.This is disgusting.⁸
  • The biggest victim of “climate reparations” will be the world’s poorest countries, whose dictators will be paid off to prevent the fossil fuel freedom that has allowed not just the US and Europe but also China and India to dramatically increase their prosperity.
  • The biggest beneficiary of “climate reparations” will be China, which is already emitting more CO2 than the US and Europe combined. (Though less per capita.)While we flagellate and cripple ourselves, China will use fossil fuels in its quest to become the world’s superpower.⁹
  • The second biggest beneficiary of “climate reparations” will be corrupt do-gooders who get to add anti-fossil-fuel strings to “reparations” dollars and dictate how it’s spent—which will surely include lots of dollars for unreliable solar panels and wind turbines made in China.

Leaders must reject reparations and champion fossil fuel freedom

  • We need leaders in the US and Europe who proudly:1. Champion the free world’s use of fossil fuels as an enormous good for the world, including its climate safety.

    2. Encourage the poor world to embrace economic freedom and fossil fuels.

    Tell your Representative to do both.

Share

Popular links

“Energy Talking Points by Alex Epstein” is my free Substack newsletter designed to give as many people as possible access to concise, powerful, well-referenced talking points on the latest energy, environmental, and climate issues from a pro-human, pro-energy perspective.

Share Energy Talking Points by Alex Epstein

1  Scientific American – COP27 Summit Yields ‘Historic Win’ for Climate Reparations but Falls Short on Emissions Reductions
2  Global population was about 8.02 billion in 2023.

World Bank data

About 7% of world population are considered high income, which translates into about 562 million individuals. Considering 3 people per average household in high income households, this translates into about 187 million households.
Pew Research – Are you in the global middle class? Find out with our income calculator

$1 trillion per annum paid by 187 million households means the average household would pay about $5,300 per year.

3  Maddison Database 2010 at the Groningen Growth and Development Centre, Faculty of Economics and Business at University of Groningen
4  UC San Diego – The Keeling Curve

For every million people on earth, annual deaths from climate-related causes (extreme temperature, drought, flood, storms, wildfires) declined 98%–from an average of 247 per year during the 1920s to 2.5 in per year during the 2010s.

Data on disaster deaths come from EM-DAT, CRED / UCLouvain, Brussels, Belgium – www.emdat.be (D. Guha-Sapir).

Population estimates for the 1920s from the Maddison Database 2010, the Groningen Growth and Development Centre, Faculty of Economics and Business at University of Groningen. For years not shown, population is assumed to have grown at a steady rate.

Population estimates for the 2010s come from World Bank Data.

5  UC San Diego – The Keeling Curve

Data on disaster deaths come from EM-DAT, CRED / UCLouvain, Brussels, Belgium – www.emdat.be (D. Guha-Sapir).

Population estimates come from World Bank Data.

6  Our World in Data – Energy Production and Consumption
7  BP – Statistical Review of World Energy
8  UN News – ‘Pay up or humanity will pay the price’, Guterres warns at COP29 climate summit
9  Our World in Data – Annual CO₂ emissions from fossil fuels, by world region
Continue Reading

Business

Ottawa’s emissions cap another headache for consumers and business

Published on November 14, 2024

By

From Resource Works

Ottawa’s emissions cap for oil and gas aims to cut emissions but risks raising costs for consumers and disrupting industry stability.

Ottawa has brought down a new emissions cap for the oil and gas industry, with a mandate to reduce emissions by 35 percent from 2019 levels by 2030 to support the federal government’s climate targets. While the federal government is celebrating the cap as a big step towards a more sustainable future, it is going to make life harder for consumers and businesses alike.

This cap is coming in at a time when the oil sector is finally gaining greater stability due to the expanded Trans Mountain pipeline (TMX), and the mandate would undermine that progress and press greater costs upon households and industries that are already adjusting to high inflation and uncertainty in world markets.

Now that TMX is operational, Canada’s oil producers have grown their access to international markets, most importantly in Asia and the West Coast of the United States. Much-needed price stability now exists for Western Canadian Select (WCS), cutting the discount against the U.S. West Texas Intermediate benchmark, enabling Canadian oil to compete more effectively.

Newfound stability means that Canadian consumers and businesses have benefited from slightly lower prices, and that industry has grown less dependent on a more limited domestic demand. However, Ottawa’s emissions cap does threaten this new balance, and the sector now has to deal with compliance costs that could be passed down to consumers.

In order to meet the cap’s targets, Canadian oil producers must heavily invest in carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies, which is costly but essential. Major CCS projects include Shell’s Quest and the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line, both of which are already operational.

The Pathways Alliance is a coalition of six major oil sands companies and is preparing to invest in one of the world’s largest networks for carbon storage. These efforts are crucial for reducing emissions, despite requiring vast amounts of capital.

Those in the industry are worrying that the emissions cap will push resources away from production and, instead, towards compliance, adding costs that will be borne by fuel prices and other consumer products.

Ottawa has portrayed the cap as an essential measure for meeting the federal government’s climate goals, with Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson labeling it “technically achievable.” Nonetheless, industry players argue that the timeline does not align with the practicalities of scaling CCS and other strategies aimed at decarbonizing.

Strathcona Resources executive chairman Adam Waterous pointed out the “stroke-of-the-pen” risk, in which shifting political landscapes imperil ongoing investments in carbon capture. Numerous oil producers feel that without certainty in carbon price stability, Ottawa’s cap will result in an unstable business environment that will push investment away from production.

Business leaders do not share the federal government’s optimism about the cap and see it as a one-sided approach that fails to reckon with market realities. The Pathways Alliance, which includes companies like Suncor Energy and Canadian Natural Resources, has been frustrated in its multiple attempts to get federal support to fund its $16.5-billion CCS project.

Rather than imposing these new limits, energy industry advocates argue that the government should provide targeted incentives like “carbon contracts for difference” (CCfDs), which help to stabilize carbon credit prices and reduce financial risk among investors. These measures would enable the energy sector to decarbonize without putting a greater burden on consumers.

The cap’s timing also raises concerns about the Canada-U.S. relationship. Canada has traditionally been a stable supplier of energy and helps to bolster U.S. energy security. However, as the U.S. increases its reliance on Canadian oil, the cap could disrupt this trade relationship. Lowered production levels would leave the economies of both the U.S. and Canada vulnerable, potentially disrupting energy prices and supply stability.

For households across Canada, the emissions cap could mean further financial strain. The higher costs of compliance passed to oil producers will mean higher prices at the pump and more expensive heating costs at a time when Canadian consumers are already struggling financially.

Businesses will also face increasing operating costs, which will be passed down to consumers via more expensive goods and services. Furthermore, higher costs and reduced production will erode Canada’s competitive advantage in the global energy market, slowing economic growth and risking job losses in the energy sector.

So, while Ottawa can laud its emissions cap as a necessary action on the climate, the implications for consumers and businesses are tremendous. Working with industry to find pragmatic, collaborative solutions is how Ottawa can avoid creating more financial burdens for Canadians.

Continue Reading

Trending

X