Sanctuary cities are not about shielding illegal immigrants, it's about jurisdiction. Local police aren't paid to enforce immigration laws, that's what ICE is paid to do. Local police are there to enforce local laws and to prevent crime whenever possible. The main reason why we don't want our local police to become an extension of immigration police is because we want all the people of our city to look to police to protect them. We want people to come forward and not be afraid to report. For example, say a person's uncle is here illegally. They might not want to report a theft if they had to worry about the investigators suspecting and reporting their uncle. Unreported crimes are exactly what a criminal wants.
Regarding "reparations". The regal right would have people think its all about white guilt and giving billions to black people to absolve that guilt. Reparations aren't about white guilt, they are about repairing damage from past mistakes. We have a multi-trillion dollar wealth gap between white and black people that is entirely due to the confiscation of generational wealth from black families that goes back hundreds of years. That wealth went to white society. So, yeah, there is a wrong that ought to be redressed but how best to do it ought to be the question, not whether or not black people are "owed money". There is a wrong that needs to be redressed. Yes, it will cost, but if done well the cost is an investment in people that will pay off over time.
The following was extracted from what Kamala Harris said on the subject in an interview with NPR:
https://www.npr.org/2019/03/14/703299534/sen-kamala-harris-on-reparations
You can look at the issue of untreated and undiagnosed trauma. African-Americans have higher rates of heart disease and high blood pressure. It is environmental. It is centuries of slavery, which was a form of violence where women were raped, where children were taken from their parents - violence associated with slavery. And that never - there was never any real intervention to break up what had been generations of people experiencing the highest forms of trauma. And trauma, undiagnosed and untreated, leads to physiological outcomes.
I think reparations - yeah. I think that the word, the term reparations, it means different things to different people. But what I mean by it is that we need to study the effects of generations of discrimination and institutional racism and determine what can be done, in terms of intervention, to correct course.
So, I'm with Harris on this one. Let's resolve to put our money where our mouth is and do something about the costs inflicted on black families due to slavery, jim crow and other actions that put black families at an economic disadvantage to white families. But instead of just looking at it as cutting a check, let's take a good look at how best to repair the damage through favorable home loans, educational opportunities, mental health counseling, grants to neighborhoods and so forth.
