In his 2024 State of the State address, Illinois Democrat governor JB Pritzger, who attacked Texas GOP governor Greg Abbott for sending illegal immigrants to blue states, declared that Illinois did not “ask for this manufactured crisis” of the huge influx of illegal immigrants.
“Over the last 18 months, more than 35,000 have arrived in Illinois, most of them landed here in buses sent by Governor Abbott of Texas. Abbott willfully planned the arrival of these individuals in locations and at times that would engender the maximum chaos for the city of Chicago,” Pritzger fulminated.
“Maybe some of you think we should just say ‘This is not our problem’ and we should just let the migrant families starve or freeze to death,” he continued later. “But that’s not what decent Midwesterners do. That’s not what leaders do. We didn’t ask for this manufactured crisis but we must deal with it all the same.”
Although Pritzger claimed Illinois under his leadership “didn’t ask for this manufactured crisis,” on August 2, 2021, he issued an executive order “expanding protections for immigrant and refugee communities and further establishing Illinois as the most welcoming state in the nation.”
“The new laws strengthen the TRUST Act and make Illinois the second state in the nation to require local officials to end partnerships with ICE, address hate crimes against immigrant communities, expand workplace protections for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients, and create the Illinois Immigration Impact Task Force to ensure state programs and policies best serve immigrant residents,” Pritzger added.
He also signed an executive order “creating the Welcoming Illinois Office, to report to the Office of the Governor and the Secretary of the Department of Human Services while being housed and supported by the Department of Human Services. The Office will work to coordinate, develop and implement policies and practices to make Illinois a more welcoming and equitable state for immigrants and refugees.”
“Throughout my governorship I’ve directed my administration to adopt policies that make Illinois a welcoming state for immigrants, and I’m proud to sign these accountability measures into law to advance our cause,” Pritzger wrote. “Every family, every child, every human being deserves to feel safe and secure in the place they call home. I am committed to making sure that value defines what it means to live in Illinois.”
In his State of the State address, Pritzger also admitted, “States and cities in the country’s interior are not equipped alone to handle the rapid influx of new arrivals that we have seen. The White House and the federal government need to step up, to coordinate and manage these asylum seekers.”
In addition, he promised to send the immigrants who arrived in Chicago to other places in the state, declaring, “This plan includes our efforts to divert as many people as possible away from temporary shelter to more permanent settlement, wherever that may be. Not because we are unwelcoming of immigrants, but because Chicago’s shelter system is near capacity.”