Virtue signaling is a common occurrence among the American Left but it comes with a cost.
The policies that result from those who all too often claim moral superiority over their political opponents can have devastating consequences.
Now Eric Adams’ hasty move has just made things even worse for a community far from home.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) is in a bind.
Massive immigrant influx spreading to Democrat strongholds
In the last year and a half over 90,000 illegal immigrants have arrived in the Big Apple as Joe Biden’s administration refuses to secure our country’s southern border.
Of that total, still 55,000 remain in the city at taxpayers’ expense, leading to full capacity at homeless shelters and costing over $1.2 billion.
The tens of thousands of new arrivals are putting a strain on city services.
The problem has been an embarrassment for officials across the Empire State, almost uniformly Democrats who have long championed immigration “sanctuary” policies.
In his quest to rid the city of the burden of supporting the illegal immigrants, Adams has sought to send the new arrivals to far-flung regions of the Empire State hundreds of miles from the city.
So far, 540 have been transported to Erie County, home of Buffalo.
Here too, services are stretched thin.
Safety compromised and a PR nightmare
Because Jericho Road Community Health Center’s migrant shelter was at capacity, the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo had agreed to let illegal immigrants live in the dorms.
That went over with the public about as well as one would expect, given recent events.
Parents were outraged over two alleged sexual assaults involving immigrants that occurred earlier this month in the county.
On August 8th, an immigrant from Venezuela was charged with raping a woman in front of a 3-year-old child.
Days later, another immigrant from the Democratic Republic of the Congo was arrested for sexual assault.
After the alleged assaults made headlines, Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz demanded that Adams stop sending illegal migrants to the area.
As a result of the outcry, SUNY canceled the agreement with Jericho Road.
CEO Dr. Myron Glick said, “We live in a community where there’s prejudice. And this decision was made, really, in my opinion, as—what’s the right word—in reaction to that prejudice.”
Of course, curiously absent in that moral preening was an invitation for any of the immigrants to stay at Dr. Glick’s residence.
In addressing the flip-flop, Buffalo State University President Bonita Durand said, “As we are welcoming our students back to campus Tuesday, we wanted to ensure the best possible learning environment for our students and smooth functioning of our university operations.”
She continued, “I made the difficult decision to discontinue the revocable permit and want to reassure our university community that as our students return to campus Tuesday they will find their learning environment as they expected.”
Good on the university for changing course to protect the students, even if it probably was just out of fear of public pressure.
In the end, this just shows that moral posturing over bad policy eventually leads to problems that can be easily avoided if only the right decisions were made in the first place.
Stay tuned to Blue State Blues for any updates to this ongoing story.
