We have been posting about Naperville City Council meetings and plans (or lack thereof) since 2012. During this time, one of our most heavily viewed posts was our coverage of Naperville City Council discussions – in 2017 – on whether or not Naperville should become a “Sanctuary City”. Council was debating the passage of a resolution welcoming (arguably encouraging) illegals to come to our city. At the time, this resolution appeared largely symbolic. It was suggested that such a resolution was merely a public reminder that our police were not to delve into immigration status questions during arrests.
As we know now, cities that took on this definition by passing such resolutions would ultimately become targets for border states and Republican governors around America who are now looking for places to send the many of thousands of migrants now inundating American cities.
The impact border migrants have had on impacted cities has been devastating. Massive housing and health care costs are crushing municipal budgets. Crime and tent cities have also followed. One enormous question also looms…are all of these migrant children going to end up in our public schools? If so, when and at what cost?
So far Naperville has largely ducked these issues. Though we don’t know if Naperville will duck these migrant issues forever, we do know that that migrant issues would probably be before council right now had our council voted to pass a resolution declaring Naperville a Sanctuary City.
Ultimately, over the objections of then councilwoman – and staunch liberal – Becky Anderson, council punted the Sanctuary City question and did not vote out this controversial item. Instead, it moved forward with adding diversity, equity and inclusion concepts into our City mission statement. A link to our 2017 post covering this Sanctuary City debate is found here: https://citycouncilwatchdog.com/2017/02/naperville-sanctuary-city-councilwoman-becky-anderson-welcome#. Naperville dodged an enormous bullet.
Watchdog Takeaway: At least for the time being, Naperville has avoided the migrant problem. There is a lesson in all of this. The only reason some officials were even considering this resolution was to repudiate the conduct of then President Donald Trump. Individual council members should opine on national issues on their own time. Council should keep its focus to local matters and the best interests of the Naperville taxpayers who elected them. Delving into national political controversies is not only often divisive and typically fruitless, in this case, it could have been catastrophic for our community.
Illegals are here in force. Just ask the cities welfare offices and school districts to give you a head count. They won’t, even with a FOIA requests, claiming they can’t due to privacy laws which is also BS!
Federal privacy laws are very clear. Even the courts have weighed in and ruled that immigration status is Protected Private Information and can not be provided to anyone that does not have a legal need to know or to anyone that does not have the person’s written consent. It has been this way for decades and neither political party has done anything to change these laws.
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/363297173/202233139349303198/full
The real scandal in Naperville is how Edward Hospital gets away without paying any property, federal or state taxes. Across the country this is becoming more and more of an issue of high executive pay and very little medical charity services given out by these “non-profit” hospitals. It’s shameful how much the executives at Edward are paid and how little charity work they do.
The late great Mayor Harold Washington was the one who put the executive order in place on March 7, 1985 to make Chicago a sanctuary city.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03h_bQF9c8A&ab_channel=ABC7Chicago
Ed Burke convicted of racketeering. IL Democrats never seem to learn but let’s keep voting them into office!
Dennis Hastert convicted of multiple counts of pedophilia. IL Republicans never seem to learn but let’s keep voting them into office!
Yeah let’s compare how many Democrats in IL have gone to jail vs. Republicans.
So your argument is there is an acceptable leave of criminal behavior by elected officials and the Republicans have not acceded this level? Sorry but I do not accept this philosophy. The reality is just because there are bad apples in a barrel, that does not make every apple in the barrel bad. I judge the individual by their behavior not the party they belong too.
My point was every political party in the US has someone that has been convicted of a crime. These are acts of individual behavior that only reflect on the party in how the party chooses to handle the situation.
We now know that Naperville voting to not be a sanctuary city means nothing to Governor Abbott, who has already sent two bus loads of migrants to our community.
The fact that this governor is now sending buses of immigrants to communities that voted against sanctuary status, to communities that are politically conservative, demonstrates his actions are more about using Texas taxpayer dollars to campaign for re-election then about actually fixing anything.
He doesn’t really what the immigrant problem in his state fixed, because if it is fixed he will have nothing to persuade voters to keep him in office. Abbott has, in reality, done nothing for the average Texas voter.