Some California counties winding down hotels for homeless
AP
Some California counties are pushing ahead with plans to wind down a program that’s housed homeless people in hotel rooms amid the coronavirus pandemic
Some California counties winding down hotels for homelessBy JANIE HARAssociated PressThe Associated PressSAN FRANCISCO
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Some California counties are pushing ahead with plans to wind down a program that’s moved homeless people into hotel rooms amid the coronavirus pandemic despite an emergency cash infusion from the state aimed at preventing people from returning to the streets in colder weather as the virus surges.
Gov. Gavin Newsom recently announced $62 million for counties to move hotel guests into permanent housing or to extend hotel leases that were part of “Project Roomkey,” which he rolled out this spring as a way to protect some people experiencing homelessness from the virus. The Federal Emergency Management Agency agreed to pick up 75% of the cost.
But counties say that with federal relief funding expiring soon, it’s time to transition residents from expensive hotel rooms to cheaper, more stable housing. Officials hope to offer a place to every resident leaving a hotel, though they acknowledge not everyone will accept it and affordable housing is difficult to find.
California is one of several states, including Washington, that turned to hotels to shelter homeless people as the virus took hold. Homelessness has soared nationwide during the pandemic, and it was already at a crisis level in California because of an expensive housing market and a shortage of affordable options. The nation’s most populated state has by far the highest number of people on the streets, though other places have a higher per capita rate.
In San Francisco, advocacy groups and some officials are outraged by the mayor’s plan to start moving hundreds of people out of hotels around the holidays. They say it’s ridiculous when thousands of people are still sleeping on sidewalks and in cars, and they don’t believe the city can find enough virus-safe housing for 2,300 people living in more than two dozen hotels.
“It makes absolute zero sense. It is outrageous, it’s irresponsible, and it basically tells people experiencing homelessness that you’re not a priority for the city,” Supervisor Hillary Ronen said as she and other leaders announced proposed legislation to slow the move and ensure every resident is offered alternative housing.
The Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing said in a statement that money from the state will provide “more flexibility and time” but would not say if San Francisco had changed its timeline. The department has said it plans to move homeless people out of all 29 hotels by June.
“We will continue to work with city staff and our service providers to deliver on our commitment to get people housed and ensure no one in our hotels gets moved back on the streets,” the statement said.
An estimated 150,000 people experiencing homelessness live in California, and there are signs that number will only increase with an economy ravaged by the pandemic. Newsom has awarded $800 million to cities and counties to buy hotels and other properties to convert into housing, saying he didn’t want to squander an opportunity to get more people indoors.
At times, connecting homeless people to shelter, work, medical care and social services boils down to finding them in time, and the hotels have been a huge help, advocates say. They say hotel residents have flourished with regular checkups and meals.
“If this were to be taken away from us at this time, it really would be like having a carpet pulled out from under us in a really major way,” said hotel resident Nicholas Garrett, who appeared with the San Francisco supervisors.
Dr. Danielle Alkov spoke of one of her patients, a transgender woman who has blossomed after being brought indoors. But her hotel is scheduled to be among the first to close.
“She’s thriving, she’s engaged in medical care, she’s very future-thinking for probably the first time in a long time, thinking about her career goals, her educational goals,” Alkov said. “The idea of her not having a stable place to go, and losing all the progress that she’s made, would be devastating.”
In Los Angeles, the Homeless Services Authority said nearly 600 people have moved out of hotel rooms and into interim housing, with 62 others in permanent housing. About 3,400 people remain in hotel rooms, and while the agency has received funding from the city to extend leases at several hotels, it will keep moving people into other housing, spokesman Christopher Yee said.
Alameda County, which includes Oakland, hopes to use state money for rental subsidies and to extend leases on hotel rooms but will continue with plans to close five of nine hotels between December and February. Over 1,000 people are in hotels there.
It’s much more cost-effective to use the money “for permanent housing with leases than to continue the hotel program indefinitely,” said Kerry Abbott, director of the county’s Office of Homeless Care and Coordination. And while some people have chosen to return to a shelter, “our goal is to make sure everyone has a housing offer. Most people will take a housing offer.”
The hotels won’t go away entirely. Abbott said the county plans to operate a 98-room quarantine and isolation hotel for six months next year and keep an additional 240 hotel rooms open through 2021 for residents who require the extra care.
By year’s end, Sacramento County plans to close trailers housing 46 people either recovering from the virus or awaiting test results. But county spokeswoman Janna Haynes said shelter hotels will stay open through early next year and nobody will be forced to leave without a place to go.
Even though the program is ending, Abbott, of Alameda County, says people have benefited deeply, with some able to start addressing issues that have kept them out of stable housing.
“Many people have been inside for the first time in a decade or longer, and have stayed inside, and have benefited from a place to stay, the services and the food and even the community our providers have put in place,” she said.
Trump Campaign: Democrats Give Housing to Illegal Migrants, Penalizing Black Americans NEIL MUNRO
28 Aug 2020 23
3:30
President Donald Trump’s campaign used the issue of illegal immigration on Thursday to seek votes from working-class blacks.
A short video released by the Trump campaign Twitter account highlighted the president’s record on improving public housing in New York and other cities.
“My name is Judy Smith,” said one black woman, who continued:
I live in New York City public housing. I’m grateful for the spotlight that President Trump is putting on New York City public housing. I think it’s wrong that the Democrats put illegal immigrants before black Americans. How is it that we have people waiting on the waiting lists for New York City public housing for 10 years or more, but yet we have illegal immigrants living here? Something is wrong with that picture.
President Trump is bringing real solutions to real problems. #RNC2020 pic.twitter.com/3Q7s2ZEchE
— Team Trump (Text VOTE to 88022) (@TeamTrump) August 28, 2020
The comments were likely aimed at working-class blacks in many swing states, including several Midwest states.
“Working-class African Americans are significantly more supportive of policies that seek to: decrease the number of immigrants coming to the United States, increase the federal role in verifying the employment status of immigrants, and attempts to amend the Constitution’s citizenship provisions,” said a 2013 peer-reviewed study by Tatishe Nteta, a professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. The study continued :
For African Americans who lost a job to an immigrant, working-class membership resulted in a 13 percentage point increase in the probability of support for an increased federal role in workplace oversight [against employment of illegal immigrants] when compared to middle-class African Americans who experienced a similar loss.
Numerous polls show that blacks — like all other groups — say they wish to welcome migrants, but strongly prefer that Americans get jobs before companies import more migrants.
Nationwide, the expanded supply of new migrants also cuts Americans’ disposable wages by inflating their housing costs . That reality is recognized by investor groups who are urging more immigration. For example, the Economic Innovation Group says , “The relationship between population growth and housing demand is clear. More people means more demand for housing, and fewer people means less demand.”
Mike Bloomberg’s pro-migration advocacy group, New American Economy , pushed the same argument :
The research shows that an increase in the absolute number of immigrants in a particular county from 2000–2010 results in corresponding economic gains—increased demand for locally produced goods and services, a corresponding inflow of U.S.-born individuals—that are reflected in the housing market.
The video also included comments from other blacks in New York:
My name is Manuel Martinez … Under the Trump administration, New York City Housing Authority has received an influx of cash that it has not seen since 1997.
My name is Claudia Perez I’m the resident council president of Washington Houses, which is in Spanish Harlem. [New York Mayor] Bill de Blasio and the way he has dealt with public housing residents is disgraceful. President Trump administration has opened their ears and has listened … [and] is bringing real solutions to real problems.
The video ends with the claim, “More Funding: Better Housing: Promise Made: Promise Kept.”
Donald Trump's labor & immigration promises for a 2nd term are vague but useful. They are also better for ordinary Americans than Joe Biden's business-backed, open-ended inflow of wage-cutting & rent-raising blue-collar workers & college- graduates. https://t.co/OmE4tRPf4T
— Neil Munro (@NeilMunroDC) August 26, 2020
Another line they cut into: Illegals get free public housing as impoverished Americans wait
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/04/another_line_they_cut_into_illegals_get_free_public_housing_as_impoverished_americans_wait.html
By Monica Showalter
Want some perspective on why so many blue sanctuary cities have so many homeless encampments hovering around?
Try the reality that illegal immigrants are routinely given free public housing by the U.S., based on the fact that they are uneducated, unskilled, and largely unemployable. Those are the criteria, and now importing poverty has never been easier. Shockingly, this comes as millions of poor Americans are out in the cold awaiting that housing that the original law was intended to help.
Thus, the tent cities, and by coincidence, the worst of these emerging shantytowns are in blue sanctuary cities loaded with illegal immigrants - Orange County, San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, New York...Is there a connection? At a minimum, it's worth looking at.
The Trump administration's Department of Housing and Urban Development is finally trying to put a stop to it as 1.5 million illegals prepare to enter the U.S. this year, and one can only wonder why they didn't do it yesterday.
According to a report in the Washington Times :
The plan would scrap Clinton-era regulations that allowed illegal immigrants to sign up for assistance without having to disclose their status.
Under the new Trump rules, not only would the leaseholder using public housing have to be an eligible U.S. person, but the government would verify all applicants through the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database, a federal system that’s used to weed illegal immigrants out of other welfare programs.
Those already getting HUD assistance would have to go through a new verification, though it would be over a period of time and wouldn’t all come at once.
“We’ve got our own people to house and need to take care of our citizens,” an administration official told The Washington Times. “Because of past loopholes in HUD guidance, illegal aliens were able to live in free public housing desperately needed by so many of our own citizens. As illegal aliens attempt to swarm our borders, we’re sending the message that you can’t live off of American welfare on the taxpayers’ dime.”
The Times notes that the rules are confusingly contradictary, and some illegal immigrant families are getting full rides based on just one member being born in the U.S. The pregnant caravaner who calculatingly slipped across the U.S. in San Diego late last year, only to have her baby the next day, now, along with her entire family, gets that free ride on government housing. Plus lots of cheesy news coverage about how heartwarming it all is. That's a lot cheaper than any housing she's going to find back in Tegucigalpa.
Migrants would be almost fools not to take the offering.
The problem of course is that Americans who paid into these programs, and the subset who find themselves in dire circumstances, are in fact being shut out.
The fill-the-pews Catholic archbishops may love to tout the virtues of illegal immigrants and wave signs about getting 'justice" for them, but the hard fact here is that these foreign nationals are stealing from others as they take this housing benefit under legal technicalities. That's not a good thing under anyone's theological law. But hypocrisy is comfortable ground for the entire open borders lobby as they shamelessly celebrate lawbreaking at the border, leaving the impoverished of the U.S. out cold.
The Trump administration is trying to have this outrage fixed by summer. But don't imagine it won't be without the open-borders lawsuits, the media sob stories, the leftist judges, and the scolding clerics.
Los Angeles County Pays Over a Billion in Welfare to Illegal Aliens Over Two Years BY MASOOMA HAQ
In 2015 and 2016, Los Angeles County paid nearly $1.3 billion in welfare funds to illegal aliens and their families. That figure amounts to 25 percent of the total spent on the county’s entire needy population, according to Fox News .
The state of California is home to more illegal aliens than any other state in the country. Approximately one in five illegal aliens lives in California, Pew reported.
Approximately a quarter of California’s 4 million illegal immigrants reside in Los Angeles County. The county allows illegal immigrant parents with children born in the United States to seek welfare and food stamp benefits.
The welfare benefits data acquired by Fox News comes from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services and shows welfare and food stamp costs for the county’s entire population were $3.1 billion in 2015, $2.9 billion in 2016.
The data also shows that during the first five months of 2017, more than 60,000 families received a total of $181 million.
Over 58,000 families received a total of $602 million in benefits in 2015 and more than 64,000 families received a total of $675 million in 2016.
Robert Rector, a Heritage Foundation senior fellow who studies poverty and illegal immigration , told Fox the costs represent “the tip of the iceberg.”
“They get $3 in benefits for every $1 they spend,” Rector said. It can cost the government a total of $24,000 per year per family to pay for things like education, police, fire, medical, and subsidized housing.
In February of 2019, the Los Angeles city council signed a resolution making it a sanctuary city. The resolution did not provide any new legal protections to their immigrants, but instead solidified existing policies.
In October 2017, former California governor Jerry Brown signed SB 54 into law. This bill made California, in Brown’s own words, a “sanctuary state.” The Justice Department filed a lawsuit against the State of California over the law. A federal judge dismissed that suit in July. SB 54 took effect on Jan. 1, 2018.
According to Center for Immigration Studies , “The new law does many things: It forbids all localities from cooperating with ICE detainer notices, it bars any law enforcement officer from participating in the popular 287(g) program , and it prevents state and local police from inquiring about individuals’ immigration status.”
Some counties in California have protested its implementation and joined the Trump administration’s lawsuit against the state.
California’s campaign to provide public services to illegal immigrants did not end with the exit of Jerry Brown. His successor, Gavin Newsom, is just as focused as Brown in funding programs for illegal residents at the expense of California taxpayers.
California’s budget earmarks millions of dollars annually to the One California program, which provides free legal assistance to all aliens, including those facing deportation, and makes California’s public universities easier for illegal-alien students to attend.
According to the Fiscal Burden of Illegal Immigration on United States Taxpayers 2017 report , for the estimated 12.5 million illegal immigrants living in the country, the resulting cost is a $116 billion burden on the national economy and taxpayers each year, after deducting the $19 billion in taxes paid by some of those illegal immigrants.
BLOG: MOST FIGURES PUT THE NUMBER OF ILLEGALS IN THE U.S. AT ABOUT 40 MILLION. WHEN THESE PEOPLE ARE HANDED AMNESTY, THEY ARE LEGALLY ENTITLED TO BRING UP THE REST OF THEIR FAMILY EFFECTIVELY LEAVING MEXICO DESERTED.
New data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that more than 22 million non-citizens now live in the United States.
Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute has testified before a Congressional committee that in 2004, 95% of all outstanding warrants for murder in Los Angeles were for illegal aliens; in 2000, 23% of all Los Angeles County jail inmates were illegal aliens and that in 1995, 60% of Los Angeles’s largest street gang, the 18th Street gang, were illegal aliens.
FACTS ON THE “REAL LATINO AMERICA” OF MEXICAN OCCUPIED LOS ANGELES:
(HIGHLY DATED) (HIGHLY DATED) (HIGHLY DATED)
This is another "fact" spun from the 2004 op-ed by Heather Mac Donald, whose article refers to a single Los Angeles gang and the conjecture of an unnamed federal prosecutor.
1. "40% of all workers in L.A. County are working for cash and not paying taxes. . . This is because they are predominantly illegal immigrants working without a green card." The Mexican tax-free economy in Los Angeles County is estimated to be in excess of $2 billion dollars a year.
2. "95% of warrants for murder in Los Angeles are for illegal aliens . . . "
3. "75% of people on the most wanted list in Los Angeles are illegal aliens."
4. "Over 2/3 of all births in Los Angeles County are to illegal alien Mexicans on Medi-Cal, whose births were paid for by taxpayers." The County of Los Angeles hands Mexico’s anchor baby breeders more than a BILLION DOLLARS a year in welfare.
5. "Nearly 35% of all inmates in California detention centers are Mexican nationals here illegally." California has the largest and most expensive prison system in the country. Half the inmates are now Mexicans. Half the murders in California are by Mexican gangs.
6. Over 300,000 illegal aliens in Los Angeles County are living in garages.
7. "The FBI reports half of all gang members in Los Angeles are most likely illegal aliens from south of the border."
8. "Nearly 60% of all occupants of HUD properties are illegal."
immigrants.
9. 21 radio stations in L. A. are Spanish speaking.
10. In L. A. County 5.1 million people speak English, 3.9 million speak Spanish.
City Council Resolution Formally Declares Los Angeles a ‘Sanctuary City’
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/02/09/city-council-resolution-formally-declares-los-angeles-sanctuary-city/
2:03
The Los Angeles City Council formally approved a resolution Friday declaring the City of Angels a “sanctuary city” for illegal aliens. The council unanimously passed the resolution in a 12-0 vote, formally declaring Los Angeles “a city of sanctuary” for those residing in the U.S. illegally “who have been under attack in this Trump era,” CBS Los Angeles reported .
“We declare, for all those who have been under attack in this Trump era, that this city, in this day, in this time, will be a city of sanctuary,” City Councilman Gil Cedillo said. “It will be a place where people will know that they will be judged by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin, and not by who they choose to love, and not by when they got here. They will be judged by their contributions to our city.”
The council’s non-binding resolution was more of a symbolic gesture, as it does not change the city’s laws.
But the resolution did allow the city to create a commission tasked with investigating civil rights violations and imposing a $125,000 to $250,000 fine on those who commit acts of violence or harassment.
Friday’s resolution made Los Angeles’s sanctuary city status official, but the Los Angeles Police Department has had longstanding sanctuary policies on the books.
Officers have been told not to arrest individuals just because they entered the U.S. illegally and bar federal immigration authorities from access to county jails without a federal warrant.
In 2017, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti also promoted the city’s sanctuary policies prohibiting federal immigration officials from enforcing federal laws on illegal immigration at the local level.
When President Trump announced that year that the federal government would withhold federal funding from cities that did not enforce federal laws on illegal immigration, Garcetti defended Los Angeles’s position as a sanctuary city.
L.A. Hits 300 Homicides After
Mayor Eric Garcetti Defunds
Police by $150 Million
Associated Press
JOEL B. POLLAK
23 Nov 2020 0
LOS ANGELES, California — Los Angeles officially recorded 300 homicides as of Sunday, reaching a mark not seen since 2009, after Mayor Eric Garcetti’s decision to defund the police by $150 million, including cuts to the homicide division.
A number we have not seen in over a decade—300 homicides in a year. Senseless violence & tragic loss of life.
Our people are doing everything they can to stop the violence, but we need your help. If you have any info, report it. You can remain anonymous. https://t.co/Ti3qvwDM7Y https://t.co/xy0LBVsj56
— LAPD HQ (@LAPDHQ) November 22, 2020
The Los Angeles Times reported Monday:
Killings are up 25% over last year and shootings are up more than 32%, mirroring increases in violence that are driving concerns in big cities across the nation. Last week, a pregnant woman was gunned down. Children and elderly residents have been killed. Of all the year’s victims, nearly 20% have been homeless. Gangs are suspected in many cases.
…
The roughly $3-billion police budget was cut this year by $150 million in the wake of widespread protests against police brutality and misconduct, and Moore said he is scrambling to put more officers on the street — particularly in South L.A., where much of the recent violence has been — as he is slashing specialized units and reducing overtime by half.
“These cuts couldn’t come at a worse time,” Moore said. “My ability to put added resources [in the community] right now is hampered.”
As Breitbart News reported in June, Garcetti announced the cuts to the police department in the midst of ongoing Black Lives Matter riots. The funds were ostensibly meant to be redistributed to “communities of color” in the city.
Moreover, as Breitbart News reported earlier this month, the homicide division has been targeted by cuts. The department’s sexual assault unit was shut down entirely due to the cuts, along with other specialized divisions, such as animal cruelty .
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His newest e-book is The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency . His recent book, RED NOVEMBER , tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak .
California Governor Newsom Issues 22 Pardons 10 allow the recipients to avoid deportation due to their crimes By Andrew R. Arthur
California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) last week issued 22 pardons, 13 commutations of sentences, and four medical reprieves. Some were garden-variety acts of clemency, but 10 were issued to allow the recipients to avoid the immigration consequences of their criminal activity. Three of the latter variety really stand out.
Saengsavan Choum was convicted in 1999 in California for voluntary manslaughter. He was 21 and the driver of a getaway car when his partner shot and killed a rival gang member. Choum received a sentence of four years for that offense.
Duc Nguyen was 16 when he and associates got into a fight. One of those associates stabbed and killed one of the others in that affray. Nguyen was sentenced to 14 years for voluntary manslaughter in 2003.
Somdeng Thongsy was convicted of second degree murder and attempted second degree murder in 1997. He received a sentence of 27 years, four months to life for those convictions. At the age of 17, he and associates got into a fight with rival gang members. He shot and killed one of those rivals, and injured two others.
The pardons for the three notes that each is facing "impending deportation", although their immigration statuses are not listed. It is safe to assume, however, that each is in a lawful status, facing removal on criminal grounds relating to their convictions.
Pursuant to section 237(a)(2)(A)(vi) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), the criminal grounds of removal in sections 237(a)(2)(A)(i) (for a crime involving moral turpitude (CIMT)), (ii) (for two CIMTs not arising out of the same course of conduct), (iii) (for an aggravated felony or felonies), and (iv) (for high-speed flight from an immigration checkpoint) do not apply to a conviction if the alien "has been granted a full and unconditional" gubernatorial pardon.
Each of the individuals described above received a full and unconditional pardon from Governor Newsom.
Murder is defined in section 187(a) of the California Penal Code as "the unlawful killing of a human being, or a fetus, with malice aforethought". Under section 188(a)(1) of the California Penal Code : "Malice is express when there is manifested a deliberate intention to unlawfully take away the life of a fellow creature."
Second degree murder is defined by section 189(b) of the California Penal Code , and is a catchall for any kind of murder that does not fall within the limited definition of first degree murder in subsection (a) therein.
Murder is an aggravated felony as defined in section 101(a)(43)(A) of the INA , and would also be a crime of violence under section 101(a)(43)(F) of the INA (if the term of imprisonment is a year of more, as in the case of Thongsy), as well as a CIMT.
Manslaughter is defined in section 192 of the California Penal Code as "the unlawful killing of a human being without malice". Pursuant to subsection (a) therein, manslaughter is "voluntary" when it is committed "upon a sudden quarrel or heat of passion".
Voluntary manslaughter is (at least arguably) an aggravated felony crime of violence where the sentence is a year or more, and a CIMT.
Given these facts, and assuming that they do not have any other criminal convictions that would render them removable from the United States (and assuming that they are otherwise in a lawful immigration status), Newsom has, effectively, rendered Choum, Nguyen, and Thongsy not removable.
That is his right as governor, and Congress can always eliminate the implications for immigration purposes of such acts of clemency as it sees fit. I will note that the pardon power has been recognized (for CIMTs, at least, before the advent of aggravated felonies) in the INA since it was passed in 1952 , and in fact was a bar to deportations for CIMTs as far back as the Immigration Act of 1917 .
Immigration is an issue for the national government, but ours is a federal republic, and most crimes are punished at the state level. It is logical — if not always reasonable — for the federal government to respect the actions of the executive of the several states in pardoning criminals for the crimes committed there.
Should Newson have issued those pardons?
That is an issue for the people of California, but with due respect to them, these are serious crimes, and (I hope) Newsom thought twice before issuing those pardons. In each case, someone died, needlessly. Deportation is the ultimate punishment for immigrant criminals (except in death penalty cases, of course), and not only a strong deterrent, but also a way to ensure that such criminals do not act in that jurisdiction again.
Of course, DHS would appear to bear some responsibility in these cases. They could have acted to remove Thongsy since 1997, Choum since 1999, and Nguyen since 2003. Perhaps ICE identified each years ago, and the imminent removal of each has been pending for 23 years, 21 years, and 17 years, respectively. If not, however, it becomes easier for a governor to issue a pardon with each passing day, contending that the convictions are old and that the actors have subsequently been rehabilitated.
All of that considered, however, California has been a sanctuary state since January 2014, when the so-called TRUST Act went into effect. Such laws serve to prevent ICE from identifying and detaining criminal aliens. You really cannot blame ICE for not removing aliens for crimes that they know nothing about.
In any event, three aliens convicted of serious crimes in which someone died will likely be able to remain in the United States indefinitely. I say "the United States" because nothing prevents any of them from moving out of the Golden State, as six million others did between 2007 and 2016 . If they reoffend in California, voters there can vote the governor out. If they reoffend elsewhere, however, the victims (and the community as a whole) will only have Gavin Newsom to blame.
Feds: Sanctuary Los Angeles Releases 100 Criminal Illegal Aliens Every Day The sanctuary city of Los Angeles, California releases up to 100 criminal illegal aliens back into neighborhoods and communities every day, according to federal immigration officials. Los Angeles officials release up to 100 criminal illegal aliens who are in police custody every day, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official Timothy Robbins.
In testimony to Congress, Robbins said that before California’s sanctuary state law — which protects criminal illegal aliens in the state from deportation — Los Angeles police would turn over to ICE between 75 to 100 criminal illegal aliens every day.
Since the sanctuary state law was implemented, Robbins said that the number has dwindled to almost zero being turned over daily to ICE agents.
Robbins said:
Today, because of the sanctuary policies that are in place, we recieve less than five which means — with all things being equal — there are 70 to 100 criminal aliens hitting the streets of Los Angeles, alone, that is one city within the United States. This is a significant problem that has been overlooked for too long.
California has one of the most expansive sanctuary state laws in the nation. As Breitbart News has reported, California law enforcement officials have refused to turn at least 5,600 criminal illegal aliens over to ICE agents for arrest and deportation. Instead, these illegal aliens were released back into communities.
In one case last year, a 47-year-old illegal alien from El Salvador sought sanctuary in California after being deported from the U.S. six times. In September 2018, the illegal alien was charged with murdering three men — including 39-year-old Steven Cruze Jr. — by beating them to death with a baseball bat.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder .
AMERICA IN MELTDOWN - STAGGERING INEQUALITY AS BIDEN PUSHES FOR MASSIVE AMNESTY TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED
Charles Blain Joel Kotkin
Deep-blue cities and states are eager to declare their social-justice credentials. New York mayor Bill de Blasio has set up a commission designed to uproot the city’s “institutional” racism, while California governor Gavin Newsom brags that his state is “the envy of the world” and will not abandon its poor (BLOG EDITOR: MORE THAN 40% OF CA LIVES BELOW THE POVERTY LINE. MORE THAN 40% OF THE STATE’S POPULATION ARE ILLEGALS). “Unlike the Washington plutocracy,” he proclaims, “California isn’t satisfied serving a powerful few on one side of the velvet rope. The California Dream is for all.”
Yet California, though well known for its wealth, also has the nation’s highest poverty rate, adjusted for housing cost . If rhetoric were magic, metropolitan areas like New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Chicago would be ideal places for aspirational minority residents. But according to statistics compiled by demographer Wendell Cox in a newly released report , these cities are far worse for nonwhites in terms of income, housing affordability, and education. New York and California also exhibit some of the highest levels of inequality in the United States, with poor outcomes for blacks and Hispanics, who, population-growth patterns suggest, are increasingly moving away from deep-blue metros to less stridently progressive ones.
The current focus on “systemic racism”—often devolving into symbolic actions like mandatory minority representation on corporate boards, hiring quotas, and an educational focus on racial redress and resentment—is not likely to improve conditions for most minorities. “If a man doesn’t have a job or an income, he has neither life nor liberty nor the possibility for the pursuit of happiness,” Martin Luther King said. “He merely exists.” That remains true. Our lodestar should be upward mobility: improving how well people live, across the board. When it comes to that criterion, blue states and cities are falling short.
T he Covid-19 pandemic has inflicted disproportionate harm to the health of Latinos and African-Americans, who, according to the CDC , have suffered rates of infections and deaths higher than the overall population, which makes a focus on upward mobility even more important. To measure progress, we have developed an Upward Mobility Index, with “opportunity ratings” for the nation’s 107 largest metropolitan areas—those with populations of 500,000 or more in 2018—by race and ethnicity. We examined the factors that underpin upward mobility and entry into the middle class. Then, we created a ranking by metro that combined these factors for the three largest ethnic and racial minorities: African-Americans, Latinos, and Asians.
The results confound assertions that nominally progressive policies—affirmative action, programs for racial redress, strict labor and environmental laws—help nonwhites. It turns out that places with low housing costs, friendly business conditions, and reasonable tax rates do much better than cities proclaiming their woke credentials.
African-Americans do best by these measurements in southern metros such as Atlanta, the traditional capital of black America; McAllen, El Paso, and Austin, Texas; and Raleigh, Virginia Beach/ Norfolk, and Richmond, Virginia. The Washington, D.C. metro area, well known for its large, middle-class African-American suburbs, also compares well. Oklahoma City, Phoenix, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and (perhaps surprisingly) Provo, Utah rank high for black success.
At the bottom of the list, California dominates, with four of the worst ten locations, including Los Angeles, which a half-century ago was widely seen as a mecca of sorts for blacks. Two of the state’s most prominent political leaders of the late twentieth century—¬four-term Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley and long-time assembly speaker and San Francisco mayor Willie Brown—came from poor Texas families, not Golden State metros.¬ Other cities traditionally attractive to African-Americans no longer serve as leading places for black ambition, including Miami and New York.
Similar, though somewhat varied, results can be seen for Latinos, now the nation’s largest minority, and Asians, the fastest-growing. Latinos seem to be doing best outside the Northeast Corridor and the West. Fayetteville (Arkansas/Missouri), for example, ranks number 7; it’s an evolving economic hub paced by Walmart, JB Hunt, and Tyson Foods. Latinos have found opportunities in metros tied to basic goods as well as technological production (St. Louis); logistics and agribusiness (Kansas City, Des Moines, and Omaha); energy (Pittsburgh and Oklahoma City); and manufacturing (Grand Rapids and Akron).
In contrast, California, with the nation’s largest Hispanic population, now includes eight of the bottom 15 metros on the Hispanic Upward Mobility Index. The nation’s largest Hispanic conurbation, Los Angeles, ranked 105th out of the 107 largest U.S. metros. The remaining six worst performers, apart from Honolulu, are on the much-deindustrialized east coast, including New York, Bridgeport-Stamford, and Worcester.
Overall, Asians enjoy incomes 43 percent higher than the U.S. average, and 29 percent higher than white non-Hispanics, according to newly released American Community Survey 2019 data. But they, too, are finding better opportunities, in terms of housing and income, in places previously not associated with earlier waves of Asian immigrants, such as Atlanta, St. Louis, Kansas City, Fayetteville, and Cincinnati. At the bottom of the Asian Upward Mobility Index ratings, six are in California, home of the nation’s largest Asian population, paced by Los Angeles at number 105. Honolulu, the nation’s most Asian metro, does even worse, at 107.
P erhaps no issue influences upward mobility more than housing prices. Since World War II, homeownership has defined middle- and working-class aspirations. High home prices tend to keep minorities, particularly blacks and Latinos, from achieving this critical component of the middle-class dream. Without homes of their own, disadvantaged minorities will face formidable challenges to boosting their wealth. Property remains key to financial security: homes today account for roughly two-thirds of the wealth of middle-income Americans. Homeowners’ median net worth is more than 40 times that of renters, according to the Census Bureau . At the same time, high rents make any economic progress difficult for those with lower-wage jobs.
The impact of blue state policies on housing costs is particularly harmful. The three least affordable U.S. metros for blacks are San Jose, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Honolulu is fourth; others include San Diego, Denver, Seattle, and Portland. In contrast, the South and Midwest are best for housing affordability. The inability of African-Americans to buy homes in key markets puts them at a disadvantage in accumulating wealth. Black families’ median household net wealth has declined to just one-tenth that of white families, the widest disparity in at least 40 years. The regulatory environment that contributes to this inequality is rarely cited by those decrying systemic racism.
The differences between regions are enormous. Black homeownership in larger metropolitan areas exceeds 50 percent in Birmingham and in the Washington, D.C. area. The top 12 metros with black homeownership exceeding 50 percent are all in the South. In contrast, only about one-third of African-Americans own homes in Los Angeles, Boston, or New York. Among large metros, Atlanta and Oklahoma City rank highest in housing affordability for blacks; for Hispanics, the leaders are Youngstown, McAllen, Pittsburgh, and Toledo, where house prices are exceptionally low. Pittsburgh, Akron, and St. Louis also rank well. The least affordable housing markets for Hispanics, like those for blacks, include the four large California metros, Honolulu, and Boston. Asians also follow this pattern, finding better affordability in the South and Midwest, while homeownership is much lower in traditional Asian hubs such as New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Honolulu.
What stands in the way of black or Latino aspirations is not race discrimination but, in part, policies that drive up housing costs, which account for 88 percent of the variation in cost of living between areas. The median house price in San Jose has risen to nearly 400 percent above the national average, according to the National Association of Realtors. It is hard to imagine public policies more disadvantageous to aspirational Americans of any ethnic or racial group.
A frican-Americans and Latinos have not shared much in the renaissance of urban areas, often built around tech and finance but not as promising in creating middle-skilled upwardly mobile jobs in other sectors. “Real” median incomes (that is, adjusted for cost of living) for African-Americans are highest in McAllen, El Paso, and Modesto. The lowest African-American incomes are in Youngstown, Milwaukee, Spokane, Providence, and Hartford. Among the larger metropolitan areas, such as Washington and Atlanta, cost-adjusted black median incomes are more than $60,000, compared with just $36,000 in San Francisco and $37,000 in Los Angeles.
Among Latinos, the highest cost-adjusted incomes are in Virginia Beach, Baltimore, and Columbus. The traditional melting pots, Los Angeles and New York, rank near the bottom 20 in Latino household income per capita. The median income for Latinos in Virginia Beach-Norfolk is $69,000—compared with $43,000 in Los Angeles, $47,000 in San Francisco and $40,000 in New York. Asians enjoy the highest incomes, in Raleigh, Jackson, and Fayetteville, at $115,000 or more. Los Angeles, with the nation’s largest Asian population, ranks in the bottom ten, with a cost-adjusted income of $60,000.
Politicians often claim to speak for minorities, but people reveal what they want by “voting with their feet.” Over the past two decades, the black household population has declined in San Francisco, Oxnard, Los Angeles, and New Orleans. Growth has been modest in Chicago, New York, San Jose, and Buffalo. In San Francisco proper (not its metro area), the African-American population share has declined from one in seven in 1970 to barely one in 20 today. Blacks are now so marginal that one filmmaker even made a movie called The Last Black Man In San Francisco .
African-American populations are growing, though, in metros like Salt Lake City, Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Minneapolis-St. Paul, which have seen an increase in black households of 100 percent or more since 2000. In trends that began even before Covid, small metros have added black households at high rates. For example, the black population in both Boise and Fayetteville increased more than 200 percent, while in Provo, Portland (Maine), and Scranton, it grew by at least 150 percent.
Latinos, approximately two-thirds of whom are foreign-born, and Asians, nearly 60 percent foreign-born, are now settling in regions that were, until recently, immigrant backwaters. Among Latinos, Scranton, near the fringe of the New York metro area, leads by a huge margin; its Latino population was negligible in 2000. Otherwise, the top metros for Latino growth are clustered overwhelmingly in the South: Knoxville, Charleston, Fayetteville, and Cape Coral. Bigger metros with large gains include Louisville, Charlotte, and Nashville.
In contrast, the lowest Latino growth is taking place mostly in coastal metropolitan areas: Los Angeles, San Jose, San Francisco, New York, Oxnard, and Miami. Chicago and Detroit also rank in the bottom ten. Asians, the fastest-growing minority, have expanded into such unlikely places as Cape Coral (Florida), Madison, Fayetteville, Scranton, Greensboro, and Indianapolis. In contrast, growth has been muted in such traditional centers as Honolulu (which ranked last), Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York.
“One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results,” economist Milton Friedman said . Whatever their professed concerns for low-income and ethnic minorities, progressive cities and their mayors fail to deliver palpable progress. Initiatives like defunding the police, affirmative action, and implementing guaranteed basic income have largely failed and in some cases have made things worse.
In contrast, more conservative areas have produced more opportunity and general well-being for the minority population. Those who govern places like New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago need to learn that solutions to America’s ethnic and racial disparities will not be found in intensified resentment, civil unrest, or further regulation that constrains the economy. Instead, broad-based economic growth appears to be the prerequisite to greater opportunity. Places with the best tax climates and the best overall business climate s fare best.
The pandemic, which has seen many metros in the Heartland, the South, and Intermountain West recover more quickly than those in locked-down New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago, could either accelerate these trends or provide a wake-up call. These blue cities must liberalize their land-use regulations to reduce rents and make house prices affordable to average-income families. And these cities certainly need a renewed focus on crime and disorder, which threaten to drive a growing exodus.
Instead of addressing “systemic racism,” these cities should instead embrace the Gospel admonition: “Physician, heal thyself.” It starts by focusing not on rhetoric but on what works—job creation, broad-based business growth, increased housing affordability, and improving dysfunctional education systems .
For now, Americans are finding their own solutions—often by moving away from locales that have stopped addressing these issues. Our commitment should be to spread more advantageous conditions to all metropolitan areas, not only to Boise and Nashville but also to New York and Los Angeles, improving quality of life for working- and middle-class Americans wherever they live.
Charles Blain ( @cjblain10 ) is the president of Urban Reform and Urban Reform Institute. A native of New Jersey, he is based in Houston and writes on municipal finance and other urban issues. Joel Kotkin ( @joelkotkin ) is a contributing editor of City Journal , the Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University, and executive director of the Urban Reform Institute. His latest book is The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class .
The Real Cost of Homelessness By Noel Anenberg
In 2016, Los Angeles Mayor Gil Garcetti proclaimed, as might an emperor or king, he would empower citizens to “transform their streets and urban corridors into vibrant, walkable spaces that reflect the unique characteristics of their communities.”
As of September 2020, Los Angeles has solved its homeless problem. The approximate 60,000 homeless encamped on Los Angeles’ streets, urban corridors, parks, and freeway underpasses vanished to be replaced by approximately 60,000 unhoused residents. Empowered by Garcetti’s hands-off the homeless order of protection issued for “public health and safety reasons,” these unhoused are reimagining their lives free of health and safety regulations and taxation applicable to the housed.
Enter Hollywood screenwriter W. Peter Iliff ( Point Break, Varsity Blues, Trump’s America. )
Iliff is a homeowner and father with that rarest of 21st-century qualities, common sense. Iliff’s cozy Spanish revival home is a short walk from the Cattaraugus underpass of The Christopher Columbus Transcontinental Highway. Several months ago, hardcore addicts erected a palatial 35-foot by 10-foot hovel that blocked the sidewalk and one traffic lane in the tunnel.
The Christopher Columbus highway bisects Iliff’s neighborhood. Families living on the south side must walk through the underpass to shop along the Robertson Boulevard urban corridor or take their children to Raynier Park, both of which are on the highway’s north side. One homeless man, wielding a lead pipe, chased a father and his four-year-old boy away as he screamed he would crush the father’s skull. Another accosted a terrified young mother walking to the park with her baby in a stroller. They threatened motorists driving through, filched bicycles, and burglarized homes for months as the stench from their fetid encampment grew unbearable.
Iliff steadily received messages from moms and nannies terrified to walk through the tunnel. Iliff repeatedly petitioned the city councilman, Council President Herb Wesson, Jr., and police for help. Garcetti’s order prevented police action. Wesson, who represents a majority black and Latino council district South of the highway, ignored them.
Serendipitously, a homeless outreach group sued Los Angeles in federal court. The complaint claimed the city had failed to shelter the homeless per the terms of a $1 billion Homeless Relief Bond approved by voters. The complaint also asked the court to order Los Angeles’ removal of persons living in freeway underpasses because of exposure to excessive heat and exhaust. U.S. District Judge David Carter agreed. He enjoined the City of Los Angeles to move the homeless out of the tunnels, including the Cattaraugus underpass.
After the police arrested the Cattaraugus addicts on robbery charges, Iliff, along with his neighbors, quickly raised money on Go Fund Me to buy boulders for placement along the tunnel’s sidewalk. They wanted to keep the tunnel clean and safe. Iliff and his ‘Rebel Alliance’ removed piles of rubbish, jugs of urine, feces, and used syringes, steam cleaned the area, then set the boulders. They liberated the underpass. Families could safely pass through.
Within hours, a phalanx of homeless outreach groups with no stake in Iliff’s community bombarded Wesson’s office with demands for the immediate removal of the hostile architecture, i.e., boulders. Wesson tweeted the boulders were wrong on “so many levels” and assured the outreached that he and his team were working to remove the hostile boulders. The humanitarian outreach groups also doxed and sent anonymous death threats to Iliff and others on the GoFundMe list. Within hours, the city served Iliff with a notice to remove the boulders or face felony dumping charges. A cowardly community council condemned Iliff’s group’s action. Protestors flooded a virtual council hearing on Zoom, turning it into something akin to the Communist Chinese Struggle Sessions used during Mao’s Cultural Revolution to humiliate dissidents publicly. To avoid felony charges, Iliff suffered the humiliation of begging forgiveness for his and his neighbors’ attempt to keep their families safe.
While speaking at Iliff’s Struggle Session, an émigré from the former Soviet Union, now fighting for socially just outcomes ala Karl Marx here said, “In all of these discussions the unhoused person has been framed as some kind of intrusion or public safety hazard — he is a resident of this neighborhood and has as much of a stake in it as anyone who owns a home here.” Exactly where does this unhoused resident receive income tax, property tax, and utility bills?
The city’s overzealous coronavirus lockdown bankrupted small businesses by the thousands while allowing big box stores to operate. The result? Los Angeles’ reimagined urban corridors are deserted, like the streets in 28 Days . Peter Iliff, who tried to be reasonable in a city unhinged, awaits his fate. The addicts are moving back into the Cattaraugus underpass. All this as Garcetti, Team Wesson, the spineless City Council, the Lilliputian Board of County Supervisors, and their Pravda , the Los Angeles Times , are at work reimagining law enforcement.
Mayor Garcetti and Councilman Wesson could have fought the State Courts order without incurring political damage. Neighboring cities do not allow fetid homeless encampments to proliferate. Old rail cars could have been converted to individual shelters and kept on railroad sidings. I suspect the socialists running this city have perpetuated the homeless epidemic to further divide Los Angeles citizens. As Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals Rule #3 states , “Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.” With the housed, the unhoused, and the unhinged, at odds, madness rules the day. The only rational thing left to do is “Pray for Surf.”
Image: Pixabay
“So-called ‘immigration reform’ is all about profits,” says Michael Lind, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
The Yale-educated author wrote :
… do low-wage immigrants—regardless of whether they are legal or illegal—actually suppress wages and/or take away jobs? This brings us to what I think of as the borscht belt theory of immigration. The best-known joke identified with the borscht belt—the region of hotels and resorts in the Catskill Mountains that once served a heavily Jewish immigrant clientele—involves a typical patron who complains that “The food in this place is really terrible, and the portions are so small!”
The borscht belt theory of immigration goes like this: “Immigrants do not suppress wages—and without more immigrants, wages will go up and everything will be more expensive!”…
Both statements cannot be true. It cannot be the case that immigrant competition does not suppress wages in a particular occupation, and at the same time also [be] true that employers in the absence of immigration would be forced to raise wages to attract workers and pass the costs along to consumers.
Lind is the author of The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Managerial Elite , which “debunks the idea that the [populist] insurgencies are primarily the result of bigotry.” The book:
… traces how the breakdown of mid-century class compromises between business and labor led to the conflict, and reveals the real battle lines.
The two classes clash over immigration, trade, the environment, and social values, and the managerial class has had the upper hand. As a result of the half-century decline of the institutions that once empowered the working class, power has shifted to the institutions the overclass controls: corporations, executive and judicial branches, universities, and the media.
Lind’s new article in Tablet magazine emphasizes how migration is used to sneak wages out of employees’ pay packets, and then sent to Wall Street where it inflates stock investors’ wealth:
When the intellectual apologists for cheap-labor immigration policies in journalism, the academy, and libertarian and progressive think tanks claim that there are entire categories of jobs that American citizens and legal immigrants already here refuse to do, they really mean that workers refuse to do those jobs in bad conditions for low wages .
Scholars have documented many industries and occupations in which employers have used low-wage legal or illegal immigrants or guest workers to break unions and keep wages low, from janitorial services to meat-packing. In tight labor markets, like the one caused by the tech bubble in the late 1990s, the recovery just before the COVID-19 pandemic, and the present period of supply disruptions, employers find that they have to raise wages and lower requirements to attract employees. That’s good for workers, even if it’s painful for employers and some consumers.
Breitbart News has extensively covered the role of money, wages, and stock values in migration politics. Journalists at corporate media outlets only cover the family dramas of struggling migrants.
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