« Mid-Morning Art Thread [Kris] | Main | Democrat Mayor of Edison, NJ Blocks Immigrant Bus From Entering City, Saying They're a "Major Security Risk" and We Can't Idenitfy Them »

Wednesday Morning Rant

No Quarter

No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

There is a reason why the Founders (James Madison, specifically) added this to the Bill of Rights. It was a direct response to the problems that the Quartering Acts in Britain caused in the Colonies. If there was no room in the barracks, colonists were required to open their properties to the Crown's soldiers. Initially, this was businesses, but that would change.

Following the Boston Tea Party, the British expanded the Acts to include private homes. This expansion of the Quartering Acts was one of the "Intolerable Acts" that helped precipitate the American Revolution. The Quartering Acts are not merely historical curiosities because they are making a comeback in American cities.

Governments - especially local governments - are once again going down this road. This time it is not about regular soldiers, but irregulars. The press calls them "migrants" or "asylum seekers" or "undocumented immigrants" because they abhor the proper classification of "illegal aliens" - but regardless of the name, these are beneficiaries of the new 21st-century Quartering Acts that our governments are imposing.

It's starting the same way and developing along the same lines. New York City is an example of what happens in other cities. Running out of places to stuff illegal aliens, the City turned to hotels. They've set up the "New Ellis Island" - what a despicable perversion that title is - at the former Roosevelt Hotel. Other hotels have seen tremendous damage and decay as a result of being used for housing illegals and the payments made to them will never offset the costs of recovery.

Running out of hotel space, the city opened more shelters at places like the cruise ship terminal in Brooklyn and in other locations - but the illegal aliens didn't like it:

The site was the subject of controversy when the city first began moving migrants there at the end of January, with some advocates comparing it to a "detention center" and a group of asylum seekers temporarily refusing to move there from a hotel in Hell's Kitchen, citing poor conditions.

But most of that is old news. The flood keeps coming, and places to stuff the invading hordes continues to run out. The problems have only gotten worse and the "solutions" get worse in turn.

New York is toying with sticking them in private homes:

Mayor Eric Adams now wants to start paying every day New Yorkers to shelter migrants in their own homes -- as the Big Apple struggles to find beds for the thousands of asylum seekers still flooding into the city.

In his latest attempt to battle the ongoing migrant crisis, Adams on Monday floated a half baked "private residence" plan, which could possibly see local homeowners getting compensation to put up asylum seekers.

New York City isn't alone, though the agitators for these kinds of plans in other cities tend to be NGOs. An NGO for Africans wants to expand its private residence operations in Detroit. In Baltimore, one of the NGOs wants the city to refurbish abandoned properties and then make them available to illegal aliens so those aliens can "spur growth" in the city:

"The gradual receding population in Baltimore is a sad situation," said Pat Jones, executive director of the Immigration Outreach Service Center. "I think that it is one that could be greatly helped by opening up some of these vacant (properties), rehabilitating them, and making them available, either for purchase or rent, to some of our immigrants coming in to the city. It might create communities that would spur more growth in the city. I'd like to see that."

Just like the British before them, America's cities are progressing down the path of the Quartering Acts. First it is businesses where the compensation will not offset the damages, but they still try to expand the operation. Now they're moving on to individuals. Put the aliens in hotels. Put them in properties with tax arrears. Ask people to put them up in their homes.

Right now, of course, this is all technically voluntary - but as this problem continues to grow, they won't be content with merely asking.