I confess that somehow I missed the story of the miraculous turnaround in the city government of Chicago. Apparently the severe budget deficits, including the onerous pension burden, have been erased. The murder epdemic on the Southside has een ended. And Chicago’s public schools, considered some of the worst in the nation, have been radically improved to the point that one thousand non-English-speaking, impoverished, and i9n many cases brutalized children from Central America are being welcomed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

Juan Perez, Jr. of the Chicago Tribune reports:

Mayor Rahm Emanuel's administration is set to aggressively expand the amount of shelter available to children apprehended at the southern U.S. border, with plans to house as many as 1,000 additional young immigrants in Chicago by the end of this year.

The mayor's office also plans to tap the city's legal community to build what it described as a "broad-based pro bono campaign" to counsel the city's share of unauthorized immigrant children, a proposal hatched as federal authorities work to boost the government's capacity to shelter and care for the unprecedented number of children arriving from Latin America.

"The influx of unaccompanied child migrants is a growing humanitarian crisis that we can no longer ignore," Emanuel said in a statement.

Before my sudden lapse of attention toward the Chicago Miracle Emanuel pulled off, I thought there was a humanitarian and budget crisis at home in Chicago. Silly me!

Oh wait!

"While we have our own challenges at home, we cannot turn our backs on children that are fleeing dangerous conditions," the mayor said. "We will do our part to ensure that these children are given access to services and treated fairly and humanely."

So there are “challenges” at home, but Chicagoans afraid to go out on the streets full of gang violence, and children languishing in failing schools are so big-hearted that they will share what they have with others who have entered the country illegally. I wonder how many members of the black community the mayor asked about this? I wonder if the unions are willing to take a cut in their pensions? If not, where are the resources for this going to come from? Of course! Uncle Sam, aka the rest of us.

But of course, the target here is Chicago’s large Hispanic community. And Emanuel faces what looks to be a tough fight for re-election.

Not only that, he is a former Obama and Clinton administration White House official. Gotta play the game, especially if he needs work following the election this fall. There seems to be a pretty good chance of that.

But no matter: these are 1000 future Democrat voters. No voter ID law in Illinois, after all.