As a record number of migrants invade the U.S., wreaking pain on New York City and other communities, one group is winning big-time: the public advocacy lawyers. Their business is to constantly sue to win more so-called rights for migrants. Rights to shelter, rights to meals, rights to health care, even the right to vote in local elections.
Who pays the bills on both sides of these lawsuits? You do. Taxpayer money largely funds these legal combatants, which include the Coalition for the Homeless, Legal Aid Society, and Vera Institute of Justice.
You’re paying to be legally coerced into providing more for migrants, even at the cost of cutting vital city services — kind of like hiring your own assassin. It’s absurd, but it’s about to get worse.
On Dec. 14, the New York City Council passed Resolution 556, calling on the state legislature to guarantee, as a right, that all migrants have lawyers paid for by taxpayers when they go to immigration court. It would be a “first-in-the-nation” guarantee.
Resolution 556 would give migrants more rights than American citizens have. No one else is guaranteed a publicly funded lawyer in civil court matters such as housing court issues or divorce.
Yikes, the city council’s proposal would make the Big Apple even more of a magnet for migrants than it already is.
Who’s behind this push? The Vera Institute of Justice, for one.
Vera claims we “need a federally funded universal legal defense service” for migrants. In short, a national army of left-wing lawyers paid by you. What better place to launch this lunatic idea than at the New York City Council?
The Vera Institute is not the only organization cashing in on migrants’ rights.
In October, Mayor Eric Adams went to court for temporary relief from the rigid rules and settlements that define what the city must provide the homeless, as tens of thousands of homeless migrants arrive. Immediately, the Legal Aid Society and the Coalition for the Homeless swooped in, claiming his plan would “gut” the long-standing rights of the homeless.
These lawsuits are largely funded by you, through grants and contracts from the city and state. Manhattan Judge Gerald Lebovits urged the parties to compromise, and arranged for the lawyers on all sides, representing the city, the state and the migrants, to meet in his chambers several times.
This scam is being repeated all over the nation. The Justice Action Center — also publicly funded — is suing the Biden administration on behalf of Haitian asylum seekers whose rights it claims were violated by U.S. Border Patrol Agents on horseback trying to stop them as they crossed the Rio Grande. Lawyers for the migrants and lawyers for the Biden administration will cross swords. Never mind who wins. They’re all being paid by us.
It’s a free country. Anyone can sue. But why should we be paying for these legal boxing matches?
Disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo wrote on these pages last week that the remedy for New York City’s mounting woes is to sue the federal government for more money. Wrong. That would send more wasted funds down the litigation rathole.
Cuomo also argues that the “right to shelter” should apply to all the counties, instead of just Gotham, and that state lawmakers should “fairly distribute” the migrant burden statewide. Spoken like a pol who is eyeing a city position and no longer cares about the rest of the state.
The notion that there is a “right to shelter” in the state Constitution was concocted by the Coalition for the Homeless in a lawsuit in 1981. It has tied the hands of city leaders ever since. It should be legally challenged. Extending that questionable right to migrants who just arrived here, and then imposing it statewide, would compound the wrong.
Tell lawmakers to stop funding the legal advocacy industry with our money. It’s time to break the stranglehold these publicly funded lawyers, under the guise of doing good, have on our city and nation.
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Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York and chairman of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths. Follow her on Twitter @Betsy_McCaughey. To find out more about Betsy McCaughey and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
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“the public advocacy lawyers. Their business is to constantly sue to win more so-called rights for migrants. Rights to shelter, rights to meals, rights to health care, even the right to vote in local elections.”
This is Exactly why the treasonous Democrat Party is importing, encouraging, supporting and protecting 10 MILLION and counting illegal immigrants. That We the People citizens tax payers are being forced to totally support.
“Property is surely a right of mankind as real as liberty.…The moment that the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of god, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. Property must be sacred or liberty cannot exist. ” – John Adams
When treasonous Socialists disguised as American Democrats deluded our wealth producing productive American Capitalists into redistributing honest American wealth to dishonest lawbreaking foreign aliens, all under the guise of imagined alien rights nowhere mentioned in our now destroyed Constitution, these Obamanites have indeed succeeded in pulling off the greatest historical theft of honest wealth and Human life force from the law abiding producers into the hands of their democracy destroying hordes of invading parasites who the Obama/Bidens wave in by the millions, stealing honest American wealth by the trillions. Insane political organizations that infinitely promote the redistribution and then total consumption, of finite honest hard-earned wealth by foreign people who never earned a cent of it, reflects in their politics an act of historical theft greater than any mugger in our streets, or Putin invader of countries abroad. Steal that Liberty of property and prosperity goes out the window along with the nation, and you become killers of human life force exceeding any acts of a Jeffrey Dahmer who also like Dems today, ate up the live force of his victims.
IF I had my way, ANY US LEGAL org, who ‘sues the US GOVT” to get more rights for illegal invaders, would see EVERYONE ASSOCIATED WITH THAT ORG, stripped PERMANENTLY OF THEIR OWN US citizenship, and Exiled permanently from this nation.