Media folks can be so negative.
After Mayor Brandon Johnson announced he was going to the southern border — America’s, not Hegewisch — I was licking my lips. This is what we journalists — OK, just me — call “a duck in a bucket.”
Imagine: the large galvanized pail, filled with water. The placid mallard, gazing up innocently as I raise the metaphorical double-barreled shotgun of scorn, squint one eye, smile, then squeeze both triggers. A simultaneous blast and quack of alarm, cut short, and gone in a cloud of feathers.
Too easy. First, the border inspection tour is a cherished cliche of the right wing. Put on your Carhartt coat, slap a look of Ted Cruz concentration on your mug as you stare fiercely at a group of miserable refugees huddled a safe distance away. Use their misery to buff your image among those not savvy enough to be disgusted.
For the mayor of Chicago to volunteer to perform that charade — it’s like his attending a Trump rally to see what they’re like.
Besides, Eric Adams, mayor of New York, just went to Mexico, Ecuador and Colombia to tell them “New York City is full,” an empty gesture immediately denounced as a “paid vacation.” So Johnson’s trip, had it happened, would have been parroting a bad New York idea. Next he’ll suggest that Chicagoans pile garbage on the sidewalk.
I was rubbing my hands. Christmas is coming early this year ...
And then Johnson has to go and ruin it by canceling his trip, in reaction to the chorus of ridicule along the lines of, “Why don’t you investigate the city that you are theoretically mayor of instead, and acquaint yourself with the myriad problems right the flip here?”
Besides refusing to drink from the poisoned chalice that Adams quaffed, Johnson also shines compared to Adams in another key metric — he hasn’t, like Adams, forged a reputation for both self-adoration and serial lying.
Yes, Chicago’s mayor can say some cringeworthy things. Announcing the trip, Johnson stressed the need for him to first secure the safety of his wife and children — as if his sitting on the front stoop with a shotgun on his knees were the only thing between them and the mobs roaming the Chicago streets. That struck me as off-message. At least when he canceled the trip, Johnson didn’t say, “I can’t leave my family unprotected in this hellhole.” At least not publicly.
Not to minimize the immediate immigrant problem, a logistical nightmare and, if we are not careful, a red state coup d’theater that in one swoop rids themselves of unwanted future citizens while dampening blue state support by busing to Illinois workers who start watching kids and doing day labor — and staffing hospitals — but soon are founding successful trucking companies, day care centers and construction firms while raising kids who’ll leap out of the blocks to become doctors and lawyers.
Like many difficult things, this effort is worthwhile. Here’s how you can know for certain. Set aside the scenes of jammed police lobbies and busloads of new immigrants arriving daily. The supposed “human smugglers, drug traffickers, and criminals” that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott describes in his fundraising letters, using the crisis to rattle his politician’s cup.
Turn your gaze to the past. Begin at the beginning.
Groups arrive at the confluence of the Chicago River and Lake Michigan, in what will be Chicago. First, various Native American bands, the Potawatomi, Ojibwe and Odawa. Next, a pair of Frenchmen, the first two drops in what would become first a trickle — Brits, Dutch and Germans. Then, a torrent — Swedes and Norwegians. Germans and Irish. Later, Chinese and Mexicans, Puerto Ricans and Vietnamese, Cambodians and Rohingya.
Which group should not have come? Which was a mistake? Who didn’t add to the city’s vibrancy? Any of them? No. The opposite. Tap a hospital administrator on the shoulder, a restaurant manager, a construction foreman, and say, “Take away the immigrants, and do you open tomorrow?” The answer would be: “Hell, no.”
So don’t panic. The Venezuelans will be no different. Today’s vexing problem is tomorrow’s thank-God-for-that solution. Ever invest? Remember how investing works. First you put in the money, then you get more back. This is the putting-in part. But immigration is a great investment, one that inevitably pays off. That’s something to feel good about.
Plus we have a mayor who can change his mind.
