RUTHFULLY YOURS

Migrant-magnet Denver has announced a plan to pay for all its new arrivals — by cutting police, firefighting, sheriff, 911, transport, infrastructure and other services otherwise meant for its citizens. Their quality of life is about to go down.

According to the Daily Caller:

The Democratic-run city of Denver, Colorado, plans to defund its police department to pay for illegal immigrants.

Denver, which is commonly referred to as a “sanctuary city,” announced on Wednesday that it will spend $89.9 million on services for incoming illegal migrants, pulling some of the funding from roughly $45 million in public programs and services. Denver’s police department will be hit with an $8.4 million reduction — about 1.9% of its total operating budget, the city confirmed to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

According to Denver’s mayor, Mike Johnston, it’s about “shared sacrifice.”

Breitbart reported:

“We think it’s a balance. We want to be a welcoming city where you don’t have a woman with a 2-year-old and a 3-year-old sleeping outside in a tent in ten-degree weather in a snowstorm. That’s one of our values. And we also want to be able to provide high-quality public services to all the taxpayers. That’s also one of our values. And in this context, without any federal support, to do both of those things requires shared sacrifice, it requires compromise. So, we are both making cuts to city budgets to meet this financial need, and we are making cuts to the amount of services we can provide to the migrants that arrive and to the number of folks that we can serve.”

 

 

His migrant plan is a doozy, too. A full free ride for the first 1,000 migrants and everyone else gets virtually nothing, except maybe a bus ticket to somebody else’s city.

But the Denver Post ran an editorial praising it as “creative and ambitious“:

Johnston’s plan will provide more services to fewer refugees, allowing the city to reduce costs and avoid public-facing budget cuts.

The Asylum Seeker Program will give the roughly 800 refugees and migrants currently in Denver hotel shelters and 200 other individuals intensive legal assistance for up to six months. That legal assistance could help people proactively apply for asylum and receive temporary work permits while their cases are adjudicated in the backlogged immigration court system. During that time, the city will house and feed the immigrants.

 

 

It also painted a curiously realistic picture of how there wasn’t enough ‘economy’ in Denver to house or employ all comers, including not even enough ‘underground’ economy.

Moving away from the city’s current policy of offering two week stays (42 days for families) in hotels is necessary because the newest arrivals have the hardest path to employment and self-sufficiency. Our market for jobs that pay cash outside federal employment laws is saturated. Those arriving today also don’t qualify for Temporary Protected Status and are unable to book appointments through Customs and Border Protection’s mobile application to claim asylum.

Which is exactly the problem with unchecked, unvetted illegal immigration into the U.S. through Joe Biden’s open borders policies.

For Denver, that leaves 39,000 other so-called asylum seekers with nothing as that lucky 1,000 win the big prize package. They can sit in the snow with the two-year-old in the tent, as the mayor piously intoned about, because there are only slots for 1,000 illegals.

Seriously, what are they going to do with them?

How do they pick the lucky 1,000 for the full-fare free ride, which not only includes free housing and free food at taxpayer expense for half a year but also extensive legal services, and free job training? Will there be nice payoffs to Denver officials for one of those 1,000 slots? It’s going to be competitive.

As for the remaining 39,000, Johnston said the city planned to fob them off onto other cities, playing “pass the migrant” with them. The plan, of course, is to disincentivize illegal migration to the city.

According to ABC7 Denver:

For new immigrants who miss out on a spot or choose not to participate, short-term congregate shelters will be available.

The stay will be shorter at these overnight congregate shelters than they have been in the past few months — reducing availability from 14-42 days to approximately 24-72 hours. Denver will also continue to help new immigrants who want to travel to a different city.

That’s a lot of migrants — and a lot of two-year-olds in the snow. It raises questions as to why there are such generous welfare packages for these foreign indigents at all. Why do some get the whole hogshead of benefits and others get nothing now? And why are city services being cut for legitimate citizens for this welfare bonanza instead of demanding that migrants come to Denver legally so they have no problems getting work and can actually contribute to Denver’s economy?

Maybe there shouldn’t be any benefits at all actually for people who come to this country without money or skills or language or anything else it takes to demonstrate some kind of commitment to life in the U.S.

Johnston claims the cuts won’t hurt, but cuts are cuts. The city will get that run-down third-world look as landscaping goes to pot and gardeners are laid off. 911 operators supposedly will have their pay ‘restructured,’ which is to say, cut. New cops won’t be hired and hiring freezes will be used to attempt to get cops out of the workforce by attrition. Rec center upgrades, road upgrades, all of that will get that run-down look from lack of upgrades and maintenance. Seems it’s just the little guy, not the imperial bureaucrat, who is going to get affected by the cuts, based on these media reports, and Johnston insists the pain will be minimal.

We’ll see about that, and whether opting to serve just 1,000 migrants actually persuades the other 39,000 to go back to their home countries. Migrants need to pay for their own services or return home. Now there’s just enough of a carrot dangled to bring them in, but not enough of a stick to persuade them not to try their luck in the first place. Good luck if you need a cop in Denver.