Black Chicago Residents ‘Sick and Tired’ of City Prioritizing Illegal Migrants
Black Chicago residents expressed their outrage at city officials at a council meeting on Wednesday for their decision to prioritize illegal migrants over the minority community present.
Roughly 2,000 illegal migrants entered Chicago since the fall of 2022 when Texas Governor Gregg Abbott began busing migrants to sanctuary cities to ease the strain on border communities. Just before the city council approved $51 million in spending to support the migrants, black Chicago residents appeared at a meeting to express their frustration with the council’s disregard for black lives.
The first man to speak at the council meeting expressed his conditional support for the funding but was immediately met with angry objections from the majority-black crowd. Other speakers demanded reparations for black residents of Chicago if the city would be willing to provide migrants with $51 million. Most agreed that Chicago officials should provide “more housing” and “more community programs.”
The city also announced plans to “temporarily” convert South Shore High School, which is located in a minority community, into a shelter for newly arrived migrants. Several Chicagoans were furious with the suggestion, stating that children in their communities desperately need places where they can learn and become productive members of society. New York recently converted its public schools into shelters for immigrants, prioritizing the new arrivals over veterans and homeless residents.
Taj Thai Sink, a public school teacher in Chicago who introduced herself as “Ty Ty,” told the council and the audience that the black community needs reparations. “We don’t wanna [sic] have to protest anybody, but we will not be ignored,” she fiercely stated. “That’s our school in South Shore.”
“We have not opened up the schools for our homeless, we see them in the streets every day, I make sure that the homeless are fed with clothing,” Carolyn Ruff, the founder of Black Lives Matter Women of Faith, told the council. She explained that the community of residents already suffering, needs to take priority over the new arrivals. “We need to take care of our community, we need to take care of our black community, we need to open up these schools for mental health.”
“We have not gotten anything for our community and we are sick and tired,” she said. “Enough is enough.” Ruff also led the crowd in a “black lives matter” chant.
Many residents complained about superstore Walmart’s departure from the city, claiming that it was a “big corporation’s” selfish decision to “abandon” the minority communities. Walmart explained that the stores hadn’t been profitable in years, while speculators cited rampant crime and shoplifting as the likely culprit.
Some speakers told the council that it wouldn’t be wise to shelter migrants in low-income areas that already qualify as food deserts. They recommended sheltering them in “more affluent areas” instead.
In 2022, Chicago allocated more than $1 billion to social programs to improve the lives of Chicagoans. Despite the enormous city spending, nearly 4,000 people were homeless on any given day in the Windy City throughout 2022. In recent years, more than 22 percent of residents in Chicago lived below the poverty line.
Rather than lowering property taxes to ease the strain on already-impoverished communities, property taxes were raised in 2022 to increase funding for more social programs. Last year, for example, the city gave $6.3 million to mental health clinics.
Despite the residents’ opposition to taking in new transplants, officials decided to allocate the $51 million — which is likely just the tip of the iceberg in spending for the thousands of immigrants traveling to sanctuary cities around the U.S.
