Declaring Montreal a sanctuary city is an expensive mistake
It’s hard to imagine a motion more ill-considered than the one passed Monday by city council to make Montreal a sanctuary city. Welcoming illegal immigrants to take advantage of municipal and, the city hopes, provincial services will create added pressures on existing resources, and result in increased taxes or deteriorating quality of life for all Montrealers. No doubt Mayor Denis Coderre and his supporters’ hearts are in the right place, but Montrealers need to know that welcoming large numbers of illegal immigrants will cost. A lot.
One need only look at the United States, which has struggled for decades now with uncontrolled immigration over its southern border, a border far more secure than Canada’s own. While it is fashionable for Canadians of all stripes to sneer at what they perceive to be American xenophobia and racism, most Canadians have no idea of the financial and social costs that large-scale illegal immigration brings.
A study by the New York State Senate showed that illegal immigrants cost the state a total of $5.6 billion per year. The costs of illegal immigration are not measured solely in dollars, however. They are measured in over-crowded classrooms and hospital emergency rooms, and long lines for social services.
Yet, it is important to note that many of the costs of illegal immigration do not fall on the political, business and university elites. These talk about compassion and the virtues of diversity, but the price is paid by the poor and working class. The elites in the United States have been insulated from the policies they support. Their children are in private school, or at least public schools in very nice areas. They have private doctors with very generous insurance plans. Illegal immigrants do not threaten their jobs.
These are the conditions that led many Americans to support Donald Trump’s call for the building of a wall, a call that many Canadians used as an opportunity to deride Trump and his followers a“haters” or clowns. Yet, Canadians have long benefited from just such a wall. It is a thousand miles thick and it’s called the United States. As long as Americans were willing to absorb large numbers of illegal immigrants, Canadians could appear virtuous, extolling the benefits of massive waves of illegal immigration without ever having to experience the burden. Americans now seem to have grown tired of the experiment and want to end it.
In a province where one-third of the population lacks a family doctor, what effect will more immigrants have on the health system? How much new welfare spending will be required? What claim will these new illegal immigrants have on social housing ? It does not appear that Montreal’s schools, or hospitals, or social service agencies are awash in cash. Where will the money come from?
No doubt the mayor and his supporters will say that they can control the inflow. But, as we have seen in other contexts, once the door is open, whether on the southern border of the United States or of Europe, it has been impossible to close. More than 400 refugees illegally crossed the Quebec border in the dead of a January winter, and more keep arriving. How many hundreds or thousands more will do the same once spring arrives?
Maybe Canada, unlike all other nations, can somehow find the magic formula to let just the right number of illegal immigrants cross the border in an orderly and controlled way. If so, Mayor Coderre needs to let the citizens of Montreal know just what that magic is. He ought to be clear as to how much, exactly, all this will cost. After all, it’s not enough to encourage Montrealers to open their hearts. They need to be prepared to open their wallets as well. Very wide.