‘We Want to Be a Welcoming City’ for Migrants, That ‘Requires Shared Sacrifice’

In part of an interview with CNBC that was recorded in February and aired Thursday on “City of Success,” Denver Mayor Mike Johnston questioned if the city was being too lenient with immigrants. When asked if it was too much, he answered: . “We want to be a welcoming city,” but to make it happen without federal aid, “common sacrifices are needed, and compromises are needed. That’s why we’re making this financial We are cutting city budgets to meet demand, and we are also reducing the amount of services we can provide to arriving immigrants and the number of people we can serve.”

Johnston said the number of immigrants coming to the city was “much higher than we thought.” What we’re very proud of is that like any other problem, we approached this and found an entrepreneurial approach and found a path to solving it. By my regular count, out of the 40,000 immigrants who have arrived in this city as of tonight, there are a total of about 40 to 45 unsheltered immigrants tonight. That means 99.9% of her 40,000 people are connected to services, housing, jobs, and are successful. So we figured out how to run this machine, how to welcome people, how to connect to legal clinics, how to provide wraparound resources. We need resources to do it well, so our challenge is: Can we do it well with federal support? Can we do it well with more work permits? Can we do it well with a coordinated immigration plan? about it. Without these three, the job becomes even more difficult. But we’re now going to step up our game and figure it out ourselves, assuming no federal aid comes. ”

CNBC host Carl Quintanilla asked, “What do you say to the people in Denver who say we’ve been too generous, we’ve donated too much, we’ve opened the door too wide?”