Clarence Page

America’s latest migrant crisis has come to Chicago and, in an unfortunately Chicago-style way, threatens to reopen old divisions over race, ethnicity and whether new arrivals might be getting helped before others in need who are already here.

With migrant families sleeping on the floor of police stations and the city running out of space and resources for the unhoused, the City Council approved $51 million in migrant aid last week, after considerable shouting and gnashing of teeth.

A week earlier, three conservative aldermen who opposed the measure temporarily blocked a final vote during Mayor Brandon Johnson’s first City Council meeting May 24. This time, after it was reintroduced during last Wednesday’s meeting, the appropriation passed 34-13.

But not before opponents in the council gallery repeatedly booed backers of the funding measure during the public comment period and during the formal debate, despite Johnson’s efforts to restore decorum.

Emotions ran high as citizens and activists expressed anger and fear over the possibility that millions of dollars might be spent on temporary shelters for new migrants before doing more to address existing problems of the unhoused.

But as debate ended, I appreciated South Side Ald. Jeanette Taylor, 20th, for pointing out tearfully that this dispute should not be seen as a conflict between Black Chicagoans and the mostly South American migrants. “Hurt people don’t hurt people,” she said repeatedly.

“It’s right to want to help other people, because as Black people, that’s what we do,” she said. “But, when the hell are y’all gonna help us? When?”

That’s not an unreasonable question. Former Mayor Lori Lightfoot failed to be reelected partly because of her widely perceived slowness in responding to concerns such as those Taylor referenced.

But, history in this city, built by waves of immigrant laborers and leaders, shows that Chicago — like America — prospers when its people work together for mutual benefit and avoid divisive quarrels over “where’s mine?”

Just as Lightfoot was ending her tenure, the city was hit with a sudden surge of migrants who have been bused or flown from southern states to Chicago and brought to police stations to await shelter beds.

City officials and volunteers say the responses has been spotty, as the new arrivals came without warning or preparation. Of course, that was part of the argument that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and other mostly Republican governors gave when they began sending migrants to Democratically-run cities to protest federal immigration policies.

Fortunately, the number of migrants stopped by the Border Patrol after illegally crossing the southern border has fallen from more than 10,000 a day to about 3,000, despite predictions of a surge after the Title 42 COVID-19 ban ended May 11. The decline has been attributed to such factors as tougher penalties and more deportations after Title 42 was lifted.

For now, it remains to be seen whether Johnson or Gov. J.B. Pritzker might want to follow the lead of California Gov. Gavin Newsom in protesting the migrants sent to his state.

Ramping up his own long-running feud with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Newsom, a Democrat, strongly hinted that the Republican presidential hopeful could face kidnapping charges.

After a group of South American migrants were sent unannounced to Sacramento in an apparent publicity stunt, Newsom cited California kidnapping laws in a snarky tweet directed at DeSantis, saying, “This isn’t Martha’s Vineyard. Kidnapping charges?”

That was an apparent reference to DeSantis’ stunt last year of sending a group of Venezuelan migrants to the wealthy liberal Massachusetts vacation spot. Newsom said his administration is working with his state Department of Justice to “investigate the circumstances around” who paid for the plane trips.

While I appreciate Newsom’s desire to express as much mockery as DeSantis’ antics deserved, I’m not delighted to see migrants seeking refuge under international protections for asylum-seekers being used, once again, as pawns by politicians. They deserve better.

And Chicagoans, along with other Americans, deserve to have a better immigration policy than what we have seen since the last major overhaul in the mid-1980s. Unfortunately, too many political leaders in both parties seem to care less about our broken borders than about having the issue as a cudgel to beat up the other side.

E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.