Migrants will be an immediate issue for Johnson
This issue can't be put on the back burner
Recent news accounts document outgoing Mayor Lori Lightfoot sharing that Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson will have a smaller-than-expected budget deficit when he assumes mayoral duties May 15. Several news stories even referred to it as a “gift.” History tells us that accounting practices vary from administration to administration and the numbers Johnson’s team comes up with might not reflect what we are being told.
One issue that certainly can’t be viewed as a gift that Lightfoot is leaving behind is the issue of Chicago being innundated with migrants being sent here from Texas by Gov. Jim Abbott. Withhin the last week, Lightfoot forwarded a letter to Abbott asking that he stop sending busloads of asylum seekers to Chicago. Abbott countered that Texas borders towns can’t accommodate the influx of Central and South Americans looking to migrate to the U.S. Abbott also suggested that Lightfoot make her appeal to President Biden asking that he tighten border security to prevent illegal crossings. That is his position even though most of those asylum seekers are not entering Texas illegally.
Lightfoot’s assessment is Chicago is “out of resources” to accept more busloads. We can be assured because the city has a change in administration, Abbott will not stop putting people on buses and sending them here. From day one this issue will be staring Johnson in the face; and because of the cost associated with it he can’t afford to put it on the back burner. Without emergency funding from the Feds or state, migration will impact his first budget.
.One such resource Lightfoot could point to is a shuttered school on the city’s South Side. It was converted into housing for the migrants. Police station lobbies across the city also have been mini-dorms for some of the newly arrived.
Johnson and his team will be tasked immediately to pick up where the Lightfoot Administration left off and identify more locations for those being sent by Abbott. How well prepared he is to do that is unclear. In the transition team subcommittee he introduced last week the sub-committee for Immigration had three co-chairs. Some of the other sub-comittees had four. In the next two weeks, the mayor-elect might want to rethink that.
The other move he might want to make is to reach out to some of the upper middle class and affluent suburbs asking them to find or make room for a couple of hundred asylum seekers who were dropped off in Chicago. It could foster some new relationships and collaborations that go beyond migration.
It is critical the Johnson Adminstrtion gets their arms around this issue immediately. There are already whisper campaigns calling migrant assistance a slap in the face to Black and Latino residents who have been making meaningful contributions as taxpayers to Chicago and the state.
