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In February 2018, Denver city leaders sent a valentine to foreigners interested in relocating to the progressive mountain city and a message to any elected officials looking to stop them.
A large, blue banner was draped on Denver’s City and County building: “Denver ❤️ Immigrants.”
Now, the heart is gone. And so is the blue banner.
They didn't mean it. They were virtue signaling. They are hypocrites.
So are Chicago, New York, and all the other so-called "progressive" "blue" cities in the country.
Be informed, not misled.
If it wasn’t clear enough, then-mayor Michael Hancock posted on social media that it was a statement of “love” to let immigrants know that Denver is “an open and welcoming city.”
Denver leaders unfurled that welcome banner six months after they passed an ordinance curtailing the city’s ability to cooperate with federal immigration agents during a Trump-era crackdown on illegal immigration. Hancock also issued an executive order at the time directing city agencies to aid illegal immigrants in Denver and setting up a legal defense fund for them.
However
Six years later, amid a crisis that has seen more than 40,000 migrants arrive in the city since late 2022, Denver leaders appear to have a new message for some of their so-called “newcomers”: If you stay in Denver, you will suffer.
“The opportunities are over,” an official with new mayor Mike Johnston’s office told a gathering of migrants in Spanish inside a city shelter in late March, according to a video obtained by a local television station. “New York gives you more. Chicago gives you more.”
Denver needs more resources, he told them, offering bus fare to somewhere, anywhere else.
“If you stay here,” he added, “you are going to suffer even more, and I don’t want to see this.”
In January, the city was housing and feeding almost 5,000 migrants, mostly Venezuelans, in hotel shelters. Other migrants slept in tents on sidewalks and in parking lots, adding a new wrinkle to Denver’s ongoing struggles with panhandling and squalid homeless camps.
At intersections throughout Denver, migrants with water bottles and squeegees head into traffic to try to make a few bucks washing drivers’ windshields.
To address a migrant-driven financial crunch, the city is cutting hours at local rec centers, slashing park programming, and freeing hiring in some departments. To save a little money, the city has decided against planting flowers in some of its parks and medians this spring.
The migrant crisis has cost the Denver region at least $170 million.
"So," the progressive would say, "at least our heart was in the right place. We tried but didn't have enough money."
Is their heart in the right place? Conservatives warned the progressive leadership that the city didn't have the money to deliver on its promises.
RE going to New York or Chicago.
Immigrants, mostly from Africa, flooded a meeting in New York City on Tuesday with complaints that the free food and free housing they are being given are not good enough for them despite the tens of billions in tax dollars spent to care for them.
Hundreds of migrants, many of whom are Muslims from Africa, told members of the New York City Council at City Hall that the tax-funded freebies they are receiving are not adequate for them and those with families.
The migrants were invited to speak to the city’s immigration committee on Tuesday, and one woman was heard complaining about the free food and blasted city officials for not giving them more permanent places to live for free.
"At the shelter, my kids cannot eat the food at the shelter,” the woman complained through a translator. On Ramadan, "we could not eat during breaks because the food is not good at all,” the woman exclaimed.
The complaint session occurred inside as more than 1,500 migrants — mostly military-aged, single men — paraded outside City Hall Park.
Many of these migrants have been complaining about the millions of dollars in free food they have been given for some time.
Late in 2023, it was reported that on one day in November, migrants threw away 5,000 prepared meals without eating them, costing the city at least $770,000 in food waste for that day alone. With metrics like this, the Big Apple sees more than one million dollars in food waste for migrants every month.
Takeaway
This whole "sanctuary city" notion is wrong on many levels, but let's examine the spiritual side.
Clearly, these cities---and many others---did not count the cost before making the declarations about "love, welcoming, inclusiveness, and free stuff.
Their hearts were apparently more directed toward making the offers to the illegals---virtue signaling---than actually paying the price to help those in need.
The Bible is clear about counting the cost of something before launching it, particularly with taxpayer money, especially when it displaces the citizens who paid the money for the services.
In making his case for Trump yesterday, Hollywood legend Jon Voight said former President Donald Trump must be returned to the White House in 2024 to “overrule the barbaric animals destroying our country.”
He made his declaration by bookending it with the observation Israel is also in grave danger, and both countries must safeguard their futures by backing Trump because the alternatives do not bear thinking about.
He makes a good point. We desperately need leadership in our country, our states, and our communities.
And in our churches.
Jesus called out hypocrisy in no uncertain way. His words were not a passing comment--they involved Matthew 23:13-39.
He defined virtue signaling.
He was very direct:
13 But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.
14 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation.
15 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.
17 Ye fools and blind: for whether is greater, the gold, or the temple that sanctifieth the gold?
24 Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.
25 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess.
27 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchers, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness.
28 Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.
Daniel Webster, an American statesman, senator, and patriot, understood this teaching. So must we.
He said, "Finally, let us not forget the religious character of our origin. Our fathers were brought hither by their high veneration for the Christian religion. They journeyed by its light and labored in its hope. They sought to incorporate its principles with the elements of their society, and to diffuse its influence through all their institutions, civil, political, or literary."
He continued: "If the power of the Gospel is not felt throughout the length and breadth of the land, anarchy and misrule, degradation and misery, corruption and darkness will reign without mitigation or end."
It's time for Christians to get real. Spiritually and politically.
Be Informed. Be Discerning. Be Vigilant. Be Engaged. Be Prayerful.