On Friday’s “PBS NewsHour,” New York Times columnist David Brooks reacted to cities like New York City struggling to deal with migrants by stating that we do need to fix the immigration system, and it will require both parties to compromise, but “if you’re going to have a sanctuary city…then, when the people are allowed to come in through our dysfunctional system, they’re going to come to your city,” and that “a lot of the most seemingly dysfunctional cities are now the most progressive cities. That’s Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, New York, Chicago, and they’re looking to be ungovernable.”
Brooks stated, “We have to fix the immigration system. Republicans need to understand that we need immigrants and we need to open the door. Democrats need to understand we need to control our borders, and that you have to use the language of fences or whatever. They can avoid the word walls if they want to, but we just have to control our borders. And if you’re going to have a sanctuary city or whatever you’re going to do and say, welcome, people, come here, then, when the people are allowed to come in through our dysfunctional system, they’re going to come to your city, it’s going to cost you a lot of money. And so, I think Democrats just have to understand, my colleague Tom Friedman puts it well, we need a big wall with a big gate. And both sides have to give a little on that.”
He continued, “And then the final thing I’ll say for Democrats, this is becoming a problem for the Democratic Party, which is that a lot of the most seemingly dysfunctional cities are now the most progressive cities. That’s Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, New York, Chicago, and they’re looking to be ungovernable. And so, I think for the Democrats, they have to take a look at a lot of the programs that have led them to this spot and say, how do we rethink urban government, so it doesn’t look like we’re looking over a bunch of cities that aren’t working?”
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