Illegal and Local: The Influx of Illegal Aliens Impacting Community Functions

Much of the discussion surrounding the massive wave of illegal aliens who have swarmed over the border has focused on big issues such as crime and poverty.

And that is good – the gangsters and terrorists flooding in and taking over apartment complexes – sorry, ABC, taking over just a few is not really better than a half dozen: the number should be zero –  are causing mayhem from New York to California and everywhere in between.

In California, though, citizens have been dealing with the issue for decades – in other words, we’re not terribly surprised about what is happening in Aurora, Colorado.

California laid down the red carpet – from public benefits to making asking a person about their immigration status at least highly inappropriate if not illegal – years ago, using justifications like “look at the root causes, they are just trying to improve their lot in life, they may not really pay taxes that much but they contribute to the economy, they are a crucial part of the growth of the state, etc.”

Mostly nonsense, of course, but a meta-level, arguments that have a sliver of plausibility, and can be easily and plausibly denied when they do not apply to reality.

What local governments have to contend with – on the ground, not 30,000 feet up – is not only different but in fact maddening as a city’s infrastructure is created to serve an expected population. Projections are made, roads are designed, etc. for a certain number of people and an influx of illegal aliens blows those plans to smithereens, directly impacting the lives of every other resident.

Let’s start with development planning. When I was mayor/councilmember of Lake Elsinore, the city literally doubled in population. But to make sure we did not go down the path of other communities that developers build, well, garbage, Lake Elsinore demanded proper thoughtful architecture, open space, etc.  We wanted to make sure the neighborhoods that were created kept their purpose – decent, relatively affordable home for the middle class, safe, comfortable  – well beyond their “build out” date.

The planning concept was long term and intended to benefit not only the new residents but the city in general.

Now to the numbers.

Say a developer wants to build 1,000 homes. That means there will be about 4,000 people living in that neighborhood. That means that the water and sewer systems will have to be of a certain size, that about 1,500 kids who need a place to go to school will have to be accounted for, that means that the roads inside and connecting to the rest of the city will have to be large enough to handle oh, say, at least 6,000 car trips a day.

The development is then built with all of those factors in mind, no matter that the developer wants to build dirt roads, open drainage ditches, and put up a big tent for the school kids to save money.

The imagine what happens when the 4,000 person estimate turns into an actuality of 6,000 due to illegal aliens house sharing.  Every estimate is off, the neighborhood suffers, and it quickly goes downhill

And the city is stuck with a problem – it hadn’t planned for enough police, stop lights, water pipes, open space, etc. to handle that population.

And that is what happens when a community tries to absorb but literally cannot absorb the illegal aliens. By the way, this applies to existing neighborhoods as well:  a 1,900-square-foot bungalow built in 1936 is not meant to have eleven residents.

This is not a thought problem – this is the reality on the ground that municipalities face, in part because of the lending industry.

During the last great wonderful for developers, before the crash or the other crash or that other crash, banks were intentionally lending to multiple owners of a single family home. Immigration status did not matter as the lenders thought that if they had three families contributing to the mortgage they did not have to worry about getting their money back.

Oops – they never thought every worker in the home would lose their jobs at the same time.

A new neighborhood that was expected to have 1,500 kids, about half of which would be in elementary school, ends up with 2,500 and suddenly, the school the developer built in the middle of the development is overwhelmed.

Some developers care about this issue, but others most certainly do not – get in, get out, on to the next town. When I was on the council in Lake Elsinore, we had one developer ask to change many of their 4-bedroom floor plans into 7 bedrooms without making any other changes to the neighborhood. Once we had gotten through the typical “we don’t have enough Mormons to justify that change” joke, we saw exactly what was happening: it was easier to sell a seven bedroom house to three families than it was to sell a four bedroom house.

As a city, we said absolutely not (score one for honest politicians because that developer had spread campaign money around rather indiscriminately), but a lot of places say sure.

So beyond the crime and the gangs and everything else, the influx of illegal aliens has a very specific and direct impact on how well a community functions.

As to the overall impacts on the schools side of the debate, that depends upon where you live. 

Big city school districts are notoriously woke– see LAUSD –   and loathe to do anything that may seem even the slightest bit politically incorrect, teachers and students be damned. Districts like that are in favor of the flood of people because it means more money and maybe yet another “injustifacation” to pass another massive school bond, the money from which goes to the administration and consultants and political friends and, with whatever is left over, maybe every once in a while gets a school built…or air conditioned.

Now, school enrollment is dropping throughout the state, in part because of the population decline, the population aging, and what happened when decent parents saw the garbage their kids were being taught via Zoom during the pandemic.

Therefore, for folks politically and/or financially connected to a school district, the influx is not a problem but an opportunity.

And that is why the problem is so difficult to solve – national “borders are not real and mean anyway” groups are not alone in their fight to bring people in no matter what.

It may drive properly run cities bananas, but illegal aliens create many funding steams by their mere presence for other government agencies.

And that is a $64 billion question that needs to be solved.