Chris Powell: How many more illegal immigrants can Conn. afford?

A map of U.S. states colored by their policy on “sanctuary cities” for illegal aliens. States in red have banned sanctuary cities statewide. States in blue are pro-sanctuary states.

MANCHESTER, Conn.

Connecticut’s state government seems to think that illegal immigration isn’t a problem here, just -- maybe -- in other states. The other day state officials gathered with advocates of illegal immigration at the state Capitol to congratulate themselves on what a Connecticut Mirror report called the “explosive” demand for state insurance coverage for illegal immigrant children.

When this insurance, which is much like federal Medicaid insurance, was extended to illegal immigrant children age 12 and younger in January 2023, the state Department of Social Services estimated that about 4,000 children would be enrolled. But enrollees now exceed 11,000.

Now pregnant illegal immigrants qualify for this insurance as well and can continue it for a year after childbirth. 

While it has not been publicized, children born to illegal immigrants in Connecticut also qualify for state government’s touted “baby bonds” program, in which the children are to receive as much as $24,000 in state money upon turning 18 -- money to be used for higher education, starting a business, buying a home or saving for retirement. The office of state Treasurer Erick Russell, which manages the program, lied to this writer to conceal the eligibility of the children of illegal immigrants but told the truth to a state legislator.

The deputy commissioner of the Social Services Department, Peter Hadler, gave the Mirror an absurd comment about the state’s medical insurance for illegal immigrant kids and pregnant illegal immigrants.

“Sometimes,” Hadler said, “there is trepidation on the part, especially of non-citizens, to participate in government programs. The good news is that that has not proven to be a barrier, and people are enrolling at strong rates and they’re seeking this out.”

Reluctance to claim government benefits? Maybe there was some back when the United States enforced its immigration law and immigrants were expected to cover their own expenses, but there is no reluctance today. Under the Biden administration and Democratic state administrations, illegal immigrants are qualifying not just for free medical insurance but also housing and monthly stipends.

There continues to be much agitation at the state Capitol to extend state medical insurance to all illegal immigrants in the state, though there are concerns about cost. It probably won’t happen during the current session of the General Assembly, since Gov. Ned Lamont is reluctant to give up the “fiscal guardrails” keeping order in state government's finances.

At the rally at the Capitol a spokesman for the coalition seeking to extend state medical insurance to all illegal immigrants in Connecticut said: “Health care is a fundamental human right, and no one should be denied access based on immigration status.”

But anyone can be treated without charge in a public hospital emergency room in the state, and is entering the United States illegally and living in Connecticut a fundamental human right too?

The advocates of extending state medical insurance to all illegal immigrants seem to think so. They seem to think there should be no controls to ensure that immigration can be assimilated without overwhelming public resources -- housing, medical care and insurance, and education -- and without sparking ethnic conflict and jeopardizing national security and the democratic and secular culture.

With its disastrous shortage of housing and long decline of its public education, Connecticut especially should have awakened to the danger by now.

While the campaign to subsidize illegal immigration dresses itself in righteousness and goodness, it devalues citizenship. It would increase dependence on government, enlarge the constituencies of the Democratic Party, increase the number of Democratic-dominated legislative districts, and drain the private sector. It would make the country ungovernable.

If what I see as the Biden administration’s open-borders policy continues and Connecticut continues its own subsidies for illegal immigration and continues its own nullification of federal immigration law, in a year or two the state easily could double its population of illegal immigrants, now estimated at 113,000. Millions of people in troubled and impoverished places like Guatemala, Venezuela, and most of Africa perceive the grand invitation. How many more does Connecticut want? How many more can it afford? 

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years (CPowell@cox.net).  

Chris Powell: How much can Connecticut bear?

A black bear, of the only bear species found in New England

Connecticut's bear population, estimated at 800, is growing "exponentially," a newspaper reported the other day. This was a bit hyperbolic, since after 800 the next level in an exponential series is 800 times 800 -- 640,000 -- and the bear population will not be increasing that quickly.

But 640,000 bears in Connecticut will be the inevitable outcome unless the state's largely indifferent policy toward them is radically changed. That policy is simply to advise the public not to feed the animals -- to secure trash cans, outdoor grills and bird feeders and to hope the bears stop breaking into houses and attacking domestic animals. If that policy was accomplishing anything, there wouldn't be 800 bears in the state already and their population wouldn't be growing, "exponentially”"or just fast. So in another 10 years or so this policy is bound to leave most towns with many bears bumping into each other as they are shooed away from one neighborhood to the next.

State government's animal-control people are tiring of anesthetizing tagging and relocating troublesome bears, increasingly inclined to tell frantic callers just to let the animals move along and frighten someone else. But as the bear population grows, the animal-control people may be compelled to do a lot more relocations, even as the remote forests to which the bears are taken fill up with them and make them even more eager to return to less competitive neighborhoods.

The alternative to having bears everywhere is for state government to authorize a bear-hunting season, maybe even paying bounties to hunters. But just musing about hunting bears makes certain wildlife lovers hysterical.

Bears are cute -- at a safe distance anyway. A few may contribute some excitement to Connecticut's ordinarily placid suburban atmosphere. But a dozen or more in every town will not be cute. They will cause perpetual panic and frequent damage and injury.

Connecticut already is full of deer, which are cute too and often a delight to see with their fawns. Bucks, while rarely seen, can be majestic.

But deer are not a delight when they dart in front of cars and get hit, damaging vehicles and injuring their occupants, or when they munch on plantings, gardens, orchards, and farm fields.

So Connecticut has some deer-hunting seasons, and there is little clamor to repeal them. Don't try telling farmers how cute deer are. Having worked so hard to get the earth to produce, farmers can obtain state permits to shoot deer on their property year-round to protect the fruit of their labor.

Enacting a bear-hunting season would eliminate the need for much more hunting in the future and thus be far kinder to the animals in the long run. But does Connecticut have any elected officials with the courage to admit that you can't always be friends equally with people and animals?

It's not just bears. How many coyotes, bobcats, weasels and such does Connecticut really want to endure? Nature is not always warm and cuddly. It often has sharp claws and teeth.

But since Connecticut is not very good at facing up to policy failures and the special interests behind them, dozens of bears in every town may be necessary before the General Assembly and the governor enact something more in the public interest than laissez-bear.

Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.

Chris Powell: Mass transit can be tough to do in suburbia

Entering the Merritt Parkway, which serves mostly suburban Fairfield County.

Highway tolls aren't the only objection to Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont's transportation-infrastructure plan. Now that the Democratic majority caucus in the state Senate seems to have blocked tolls for another year or two, there are also complaints about how the governor recommends spending whatever money still can be raised for transportation.

Some people say the governor mistakenly emphasizes highway widening over mass transit and that the "bottlenecks" he wants to remove can never be removed because "if you built it, they will come" -- that new traffic eventually will materialize to clog whatever highways are widened.

There is some truth to that, but it is not dispositive. For if increased traffic really should disqualify highway construction, the Boston Post Road, U.S. Route 1 northeast from New York, never could have been more than a footpath, never widened for wagons and paved, and the mail between the two cities forever would have had to be carried by boat through Long Island Sound and around Cape Cod.

Politically incorrect as it may be, population growth almost always will require road construction and widening, and it will always be a matter of judgment as to how much crowding and traffic signify too much growth.

Of course just as when you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail, when you're a roadbuilder everything looks like it needs paving, and most of the recent support for tolls in Connecticut came from construction businesses and labor unions that stood to receive most of the toll revenue and so were indifferent to which forms of transit might be best. Roadbuilding can get out of control, as it did in New York City in the 1950s and ‘60s during the tenure of the now-infamous parks, bridge, and tunnel commissioner Robert Moses, though the city, being so densely populated, was perfect for expanding mass transit. As a result ,construction of the Second Avenue subway line has been nearly a century behind schedule.

Today the transit dilemma identified by the governor's critics arises mostly where city and suburb meet -- where population density falls below the level needed to prevent mass transit from operating at an impossible deficit. Unfortunately, that's Connecticut for you -- largely suburban. Rebuilding the railroad line between Hartford and New Haven just cost the state and federal governments almost $800 million and each passenger's one-way trip incurs a grotesque operating cost of almost $60 even as the price of a ticket is only $8.

Mass transit works best where it is comprehensive -- where travelers don't need a car at either end of the line or where there is commuter parking at one end and the last leg of the trip is short. That is often the case in lower Fairfield and New Haven counties, along the Metro-North commuter railroad, the busiest such railroad in the country, but not in the rest of the state, which still needs roads more than rails.

Another complaint made lately in regard to tolls is that people in Connecticut think that highways should be free. But they don't really. Rather they are realizing that they have been paying for highways through fuel and related taxes while much of the revenue has been diverted to state employee pensions and other irrelevant purposes.

Connecticut could greatly reduce its transportation-infrastructure needs if it ever reduced poverty in its anarchic cities enough that middle-class people wanted to live there again. But maintaining poverty here is a bigger business than maintaining the roads and rails and it can't be questioned in polite company.

Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.