In homeless-plagued America, why are taxpayers financing second homes for illegals?
The mainstream media are making a big fuss about the Department of Housing and Urban Development's plan to extend public housing subsidies solely to families with legal or citizenship status. The New York Times version of this was so biased and contemptuous of U.S. citizens that I refuse to link it, but here is the Washington Post's less slanted version:
Undocumented immigrants [sic] may no longer sign the leases of subsidized housing, even if their children are entitled to prorated benefits.
Approximately 25,000 households, representing about 108,000 people, now living in subsidized housing have at least one ineligible member, according to the HUD analysis.
Among these mixed-status households, 70 percent, or 76,000 people, are legally eligible for benefits — of whom 55,000 are children, HUD says. The vast majority live in California, Texas and New York.
The press is framing this as a heartless-to-children issue, but the problem is one of priorities in how federal resources are used. Should illegal parents get benefits because of their 55,000 kids when the homeless citizen parents of another 55,000 homeless children are left to huddle in the cold? Or even more pointedly, should illegal aliens who are financing second households back home be entitled to housing assistance here even as citizens don't get it? Second homes aren't exactly the purpose of a government program intended to help the impoverished.
A look at the U.S. homeless figures from the National Alliance to End Homelessness pretty well provides the perspective that the press has ignored.
Figures in the NGO's linked chart for 2018 show that there are 552,830 people who are homeless in America today. Of that total, 180,413 are identified as "people in families," and another 36,361 are identified as 'youth,' presumably runaways and throwaways. So pretty close to half of the homeless population would qualify for that same housing subsidization illegals are getting, and they can't get it. How many is that? Two hundred forty thousand or so, or twenty percent of the homeless population. So with a base figure of 55,000 (it would be more if the illegal parents are included — we can assume one illegal parent per child), it means that about 20% to 40% of the U.S. homeless population could be helped if the illegal alien population were sent back home. That would presume that the homeless population is entirely composed of citizens — and based on the chart by approximation, it likely is — half the homeless population is white, and 40% of it is black. The Asian homeless population is near zero, and the Latino population, which would likely include a certain number of illegal aliens in an approximation, is just slightly overrepresented at 22%. Here's another thing: only about a fifth of the homeless population is classified as 'chronically homeless,' which is a population that is very difficult to help. It appears that 80% of the homeless population could be helped by housing subsidies. Well, they can't get them.
Conclusion: Americans are being shut out, particularly African-Americans, who are grossly overrepresented at 40% of the homeless population.
What's shocking, however, is that the housing subsidies are actually the federal financing of second homes for illegal aliens. They already have homes — in their homelands. The housing they are getting here is for their second homes.
How can we infer that? For starters, because of the remittances. Remittances are now approaching a quarter of Central America's GDP and top several billion dollars annually. They are used to finance remaining family members back home. Home? Yes, these illegal aliens have homes — very few pull up stakes entirely and place all of their eggs in the 'America' basket, given that illegal immigration means the prospect of potential deportation. Legal immigrants often do it, but why would anyone do that as an illegal one? Unlike, say the average North Korean claiming asylum who has fled for his life and cut all ties to his homeland forever, these incoming migrants are coming here as a means to earn money to support households back in their home countries, and they intend to fly back and forth to them, which rather makes a mockery of the idea of 'asylum.' How can anyone who's supposedly full of 'credible fear of persecution' want to return to the scene of the supposed crime and bankroll it with remittances? According to the Wall Street Journal, a quarter of Honduran households get these remittances, and more than half the Honduran population in the U.S. is here illegally. And that's just one country — the dynamic is repeated all through the region and beyond.
Illegal migrants don't abandon their homes to get to the U.S.; they hold two homes — almost comparable to Bernie Sanders, who's all in for having at least a couple of homes — and that's fine and dandy, except that we return to the problem of allocation of resources.
This is, after all, going on in an era of record blue-city homelessness. Those impoverished from it, cast out of housing by the Democrat-green-NIMBY industrial complex, continue to grow in numbers.
Which brings us back to the Cher Axiom:
I Understand Helping struggling Immigrants,but MY CITY (Los Angeles) ISNT TAKING CARE OF ITS OWN.WHAT ABOUT THE 50,000+🇺🇸Citizens WHO LIVE ON THE STREETS.PPL WHO LIVE BELOW POVERTY LINE,& HUNGRY? If My State Can’t Take Care of Its Own(Many Are VETS)How Can it Take Care Of More
— Cher (@cher) April 14, 2019
...and why is this housing-for-illegals issue an issue at all?
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