Sometime this month, the Border Patrol will make its 2 millionth arrest of those illegally entering the southern border since Joe Biden became president. Close to half of those arrested after their illegal entry have been released into the United States by Biden. They will never be deported.
Now, California wants to give all those illegal immigrants free healthcare. New York City wants to give noncitizens the right to vote. If Democrats have their way, citizenship will soon be as meaningless as they are making the southern border to be.
California has already been giving illegal immigrants under the age of 26 free healthcare for two years now. They are set to expand this privilege to illegal immigrants over the age of 50 this spring. Gov. Gavin Newsom now wants to pass new legislation that will give free healthcare to all the illegal immigrants in between those ages, an estimated 700,000 people, at the cost of $2.2 billion annually.
“We are positioned with this budget to be able to deliver on what we’ve been promoting: universal healthcare,” Newsom said while unveiling his budget last week. “I’m proud to be here, and I hope we see this replicated across the country.”
As with every terrible idea the Left devises, that is always the goal: to force those same wretched policies on the rest of the nation. Five other deep-blue states already give free healthcare to illegal immigrant children, including Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, and Washington. If Democrats manage to get rid of the filibuster in the Senate, no doubt they will force all 46 other states to do the same.
Not all bad ideas originate in California, however. The small Washington, D.C., suburb of Takoma Park, Maryland, has allowed noncitizens to vote in its city elections since 1992. The policy hasn’t exactly spread like wildfire, but 15 cities now allow noncitizens to vote in municipal elections, including another 10 in Maryland, two in Vermont, and, of course, San Francisco. New York City is also likely to join the noncitizen voting bandwagon after newly sworn-in Mayor Eric Adams endorsed legislation giving the city’s estimated 800,000 noncitizens the ability to vote in city elections.
The 1993 Motor Voter Act made it illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections, but it did provide room for states and localities to allow noncitizens to vote in local elections. Despite the possibility of a year in jail and certain deportation, significant numbers of noncitizens already vote illegally in federal elections every cycle. A 2014 study found that 6.4% of noncitizens voted in the 2008 election and 2.2% voted in the 2010 midterm elections. The authors concluded that because of the close margins in some Senate races, illegal noncitizen voting likely gave Democrats the 60th vote they needed to pass the Affordable Care Act.
No wonder Democrats are so eager to get more noncitizens in the habit of voting.
It is not a coincidence that the same party in which only 30% of its members are “extremely proud” to be an American wants to dismantle the borders and devalue citizenship in this manner. The Democratic Party is ruled by a wealthy, cosmopolitan elite who think of themselves as global citizens. They are embarrassed even to admit that they are American as they jet around the world from one international vacation spot to another.
As long as Democratic strongholds are allowed to declare themselves “sanctuary cities” and refuse to cooperate with federal immigration law enforcement, there is no such thing as a “local” election on immigration issues. Congress should move to ban noncitizen voting — at least until localities have agreed to cooperate in enforcing America’s immigration laws.
