WHY TRANSPORTING IMMIGRANTS TO "SANCTUARY CITIES" MAKES SENSE TO CONSERVATIVES

The obvious question is: If you're Donald Trump or one of his supporters, and you don't want undocumented immigrants in America, doesn't this defeat the purpose?

An idea floated by President Donald Trump to send immigrants from the border to “sanctuary cities” to exact revenge on Democratic foes could end up doing the migrants a favor by placing them in locations that make it easier to put down roots and stay in the country.

The plan would put thousands of immigrants in cities that are not only welcoming to them, but also more likely to rebuff federal officials carrying out deportation orders. Many of these locations have more resources to help immigrants make their legal cases to stay in the United States than smaller cities, with some of the nation’s biggest immigration advocacy groups based in places like San Francisco, New York City and Chicago....

The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University announced this week that an analysis found that immigrants in sanctuary cities such as New York and Los Angeles are 20% less likely to be arrested out in the community than in cities without such policies.

But conservatives don't think this would be embedding the immigrants more securely in America because they don't regard big liberal cities as part of America. As far as the right is concerned, our voters are fraudulent, our gun laws are illegitimate, our multiculturalism is treasonous, and basically everything about us says "un-American hellhole." Real America consists of outer-ring suburbs, exurbs, and small rural towns. If you live in a gated community, you live in America. If you live in Denver or Boston or Seattle, you live in the Third World.

For years they've substituted anecdotes for data in their assessment of the impact of immigrants on society, so they assume every single person they'd be transporting to our cities is a violent criminal or future welfare sponger. They think we know this about immigrants, but we want them in our cities to illegally pad the voter rolls, or to show our liberal friends that we're "woke."

But mostly they think we're not part of their country. And in a way they're right -- they don't live in cities and they never visit. They have no idea how urban life works; everything they think they know about city life derives from news broadcasts and crime dramas of the late '60s, '70s, '80s, and early '90s. They still fear crack and the Black Panthers; they still laugh at Jackie Mason jokes about Puerto Ricans stealing hubcaps. They think they're just shipping the immigrants across another border -- one they'll never cross.