Editor’s note: Contributing columnist, Steve Nicklas, expresses his views and insight on various topics in Marketplace.
— Steve’s Marketplace —
The clandestine flights would arrive late at night on a remote air strip at Jacksonville International Airport. The planes were unmarked. The trips were unannounced.
That was several years ago. The onslaught of illegal migration was only beginning. Now, the migrant flights are common, almost routine, to airports around the U.S. Each carrying illegals from common ground – the wide-open southern border.
It is a harsh reality. The migrant flights are bringing the border to us.
“This has turned every single town in America into a border town,” Kat Cammack said this week in a televised interview. Cammack represents the Gainesville area and is one of many young and promising U.S. representatives from Florida. The list includes Byron Donalds, Anna Paulina Luna, Greg Steube, Matt Gaetz, Michael Waltz, Maria Elvira Salazar, Cory Mills and our own Aaron Bean.
The migrant flights have proliferated under an open-door policy of the administration of President Biden. We now have a grave national emergency.
“It’s directly Joe Biden’s fault due to his lack of action,” Cammack said.
The earliest migrant flights were detailed in this column in August 2021. A civil service employee at JIA contacted me about secret flights coming into the runways along Pecan Park Road. Few had heard of the flights at the time. Now they are commonplace.
Several months later, the issue was elevated when an illegal migrant was arrested walking down a street in north Jacksonville covered in blood. The illegal had come here as a minor, lying about his age. He bludgeoned a business owner who had provided shelter and work for him.
In response, Gov. Ron DeSantis spoke out about the complications of an open border. The horrific crime was a result of “unfettered illegal migration,” according to a DeSantis spokesman.
“More than 70 flights transporting migrants from the southern border to Jacksonville have landed in the dark of the night in recent months,” according to the spokesman. “On average, there’s 36 passengers on each of these flights. And that has been going on over the course of the summer through September.”
A year later, DeSantis received national attention when he authorized two planes to take illegals to swanky Martha’s Vinyard. And the Florida Legislature approved $12 million that year to transport illegals out of our state.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has sent the most illegals to northern states on planes and buses. The Biden administration is also transporting illegals, especially children, from the border to various destinations. Even Democrat-run states.
Cammack has been to the southern border nine times. She describes the humanitarian crisis there, the drug smuggling, the human trafficking, the passage of international terrorists.
Until now, Biden’s spokespeople maintained the border was controlled, and secure. “That is absolutely a lie,” Cammack said.
In a change of heart, Biden’s administration will build some 20 miles of wall along the southern border. Hundreds of miles of wall were erected by former president Donald Trump. Biden refused to complete the final stages of the wall, and then prevented Texas and Arizona from doing it themselves.
“They’ve got to admit they were wrong,” Cammack said about Democrats’ opposition to the border wall. “We know Trump Derangement Syndrome is alive and well at the White House right now. Putting American first works.”
Now, the mayors of several sanctuary cities are traveling to the border, searching for answers. The mayors of New York City and Chicago say their cities are being overrun by illegals from the southern border.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams is spending four days in Central and South America. His goal: To convince migrants to not come to his city. In Chicago, migrants are sleeping at airports and police stations until city officials can accommodate them.
The burden of illegal migration is magnified at public schools. Teaching children who cannot speak or read English requires additional staff and support. With substantial costs attached.
Illegals are also straining our social infrastructure. They are receiving Medicaid, food stamps, money from Social Security, etc. While poorer residents are left out.
“If you continue to put Americans last, you will have no one to take care of someone who needs help,” Cammack said. Meanwhile, our country’s veterans are “being pushed out and onto the streets.”
Cammack believes it’s part of a bigger plan – to allow non-citizens to vote, without identification. In this way, Democrats have increased their voting base with millions of illegal migrants.
“They are entirely reliant on dependency and control,” Cammack said about Democrats. “All they want to do is keep people dependent on big government.”
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Steve Nicklas is the managing partner of Nicklas Wealth Management in Fernandina Beach. He is also an award-winning columnist. His columns also regularly appear in weekly newspapers in Northeast Florida and in Southeast Georgia, and on his website at www.SteveNicklasMarketplace.com. He has published a book, “All About Money,” of his favorite columns from the past 20 years. The book is available on Amazon. He has also done financial reports for area radio stations and for National Public Radio in Jacksonville. He can be reached by email at [email protected] or by phone at 904-753-0236.
