CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – Not far from my old neighborhood in Brooklyn is Floyd Bennett Field. It used to be a municipal airport and naval reserve base. Today its park land near Jamaica Bay.
Only something curious has happened in the past year. The runways are now covered with large tents. Floyd Bennett Field is now an encampment for illegal immigrants.
People who live in their neighborhood say the illegals are free to roam, and sometimes knock in their doors panhandling or asking for clothing. Families who live nearby no longer allow their children to play in their yards.
If you wanted to take a Christmas vacation to New York or Chicago, you wouldn’t have been able to find a hotel room. Some tourists say reservations that were made months earlier were canceled. One newlywed couple said a block of 40 rooms for their wedding guests were canceled the week before their wedding. The rooms they reserved were given to illegal immigrants. The hotel can fill those rooms indefinitely and bill the government instead of having regular customers stay for a day or two.
The police chief in Whitewater, Wisconsin wrote a letter to the Biden Administration. His city of 15,000 has been overrun by 1,000 immigrants from Nicaragua and Venezuela. The owner of the Hispanic grocery store says each week migrant workers line up to wire money back home.
The latest human caravan making its way through Mexico towards our southern border is marching under the banner “Exodus from Poverty.”
What do these seemingly disconnected stories tell us about illegal immigrants? That our laws concerning asylum and entry into the country are being ignored. We offer political asylum to people who are fleeing persecution. If you’re a member of the wrong political party or the wrong ethnic group, we will let you in. Poverty, crime, poor health care or an abusive spouse are not recognized reasons for asylum. Our law also says that asylum-seekers stay in the nearest safe country before coming to our border. So refugees from Guatemala or Venezuela should be staying in Mexico. Those who claim they are exiting from poverty do not have legitimate asylum claims and should be denied entry.
We are a nation of immigrants. Legal immigration made the United States great. But we are also a country of laws. We need both.
Chris Conley
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