Chicago Mayor Demands Work Permits for a Half Million Illegal Immigrants

Brandon Johnson speaks after being projected winner as mayor in Chicago on April 4, 2023. Alex Wroblewski/Getty Images

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has urged President Joe Biden to grant work permits to nearly 500,000 illegal immigrants living in the city, raising concerns among activists that the move could further erode Illinois’s already worst-in-the-nation black unemployment rate.

“We need the president to extend the same economic opportunities long term for our undocumented brothers and sisters, so they can build a better life here in the city of Chicago or wherever else they decide to live,” Mr. Johnson told reporters at a roundtable with business leaders on April 4.

“I want to make this emphatically clear: Chicago will never turn its back on people who wish to call the city of Chicago their home.”

He said the city can easily welcome another 400,000 to 700,000 illegal immigrants.

Mr. Johnson said he and several other big city mayors—including from Seattle, Denver, and New York—wrote a letter to the Biden administration requesting additional work permits for immigrants who entered the country illegally.

He called the surge in illegal immigrants a “humanitarian crisis,“ adding that city officials will not ”waver in their commitment to the immigrant communities.”

“I remain standing in my belief that a more inclusive and equitable future for all residents is truly possible, whether they arrived here yesterday or have been here for an extended period of time,” he said.

Critics in Black Community

However, the mayor’s demand that more jobs go to illegal immigrants infuriated critics in the black community, who see it as another example of the city’s policies that have eroded the quality of life for legal citizens at the expense of those who break the law to enter the country.

Tyrone Muhammad, executive director of Ex-Cons for Community and Social Change, a Chicago-based group that works with at-risk youths to promote social change, told The Epoch Times that Chicagoans in dire need should be the priority.

“The bottom line is, why not put that money, energy, and all of those resources into our black children and young men right here in Chicago who are struggling to find employment,” Mr. Muhammad said.

“The Chicago population in the 18–24 group is dealing with a real unemployment rate of nearly 70 percent. These are the most at-risk individuals in desperate need of jobs, and our leaders have turned their backs on them.

“It’s asinine to talk about giving work visas to migrants when we have a jobless crisis right here on the streets of Chicago among our own people.”

Residents of Illinois continue to lag behind the rest of the nation in the overall unemployment rate. According to the Illinois Department of Employment Security, the state saw 4.8 percent of its population unemployed in February, nearly a full point higher than the rest of the country, which had 3.9 percent unemployment.

However, in the black community, joblessness numbers came in significantly higher. The unemployment rate among blacks spiked in March, according to data released by the Department of Labor, rising to 6.4 percent from 5.6 percent in February. Further, black women saw an even larger drop in employment and overall labor-force participation, with the overall unemployment rate rising by 1.1 percentage points as more of them left the workforce.

Illinois has the highest black unemployment rate in the nation at 10.7 percent, according to the most recent data from the Economic Policy Institute.

Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation Chair Cicley Gay, in a March statement, claimed that the true unemployment numbers for black Americans are much worse and that the ones publicly released have been obfuscated by officials.

“President Biden willfully counts only 53% of unemployed and laid off working-class Americans, leaving 47% of American workers, including Black Americans uncounted, and unseen, by Congressional policy makers, who use the administration’s numbers to construct legislation to help unemployed Americans,” the statement reads.

Chicago has maintained its status as a sanctuary city since 1985, when former Mayor Harold Washington issued an executive order. The order became law in 2006 when city officials were directed not to ask about immigration status, disclose that information to federal authorities, or deny city services depending on citizenship status.

Nearly 12,000 illegal immigrants are spread out over 23 shelters throughout the city, with more continuing to arrive daily.

Mr. Mohammad warned that a political storm might be on the horizon if Chicago officials don’t reprioritize their policy goals and refocus them on their own people.

“The black community has been taken for granted by these so-called leaders, and there is a movement beginning to organize that will create a big enough consensus to allow us to finally have a voice,” he said.

“For far too long, they have been using the black community as just another tool in a broken system, like a pack of ravenous wolves feeding off of dead carcasses of society, and the people are beginning to wake up.”