Mayor 6.6 has it all figured out — illegal immigration is our fault
Mayor Brandon Johnson has finally solved the mystery of Chicago’s migrant crisis.
It’s America’s fault.
In a recent social media post, Johnson explained that the real cause of the massive wave of migrants arriving in cities like Chicago is decades of what he calls “temerarious violence abroad.” According to the mayor, the United States has destabilized countries around the world, forcing their citizens to flee and seek refuge in humane cities like ours.
Here’s the post:
“Decades of destructive U.S. foreign policy have caused a series of migrant crises across the Global South. Human beings seek refuge in humane cities, like Chicago, from the devastating impacts of the U.S.'s sanctions and warfare. Then, the federal government strips vital funding from our cities for refusing to dehumanize those same people whom we've already made desperate through our reckless foreign policy. Run the tape back to when I took office and you'll hear me saying the same thing: until we cease our temerarious (sic) violence abroad, the victims of our foreign policy will continue to seek safe refuge in our cities.”
It’s right out of the Oliver Stone school of foreign policy.
In other words, the migrants flooding into Chicago are not primarily the result of failed governments, corrupt regimes, narco-states, socialist economic collapse, or gang-dominated societies.
No, according to Mayor 6.6, it’s all because of us evil Americans.
The worldview is so bizarrely out of touch with reality that it almost takes your breath away.
Let’s start with the obvious. The migrants arriving in Chicago come from places like Venezuela where criminal gangs or authoritarian governments dominate daily life. These are countries that have been hollowed out by corruption, socialist mismanagement, dictatorship, or narco-cartel violence.
But somehow, in the mayor’s telling, the U.S. is to blame for all of it.
This is the classic progressive doctrine of “Blame America First.”
In this worldview, the United States is the root cause of nearly every problem on the planet. If a country collapses economically, it’s America’s fault. If gangs run wild in the streets, America must somehow have caused it. If millions of people flee their own governments, well, that must be because of American sanctions or intervention.
The fact that many of these countries destroyed themselves long before the U.S. lifted a finger never seems to enter the analysis.
Take Venezuela. Once one of the richest countries in Latin America, it collapsed after decades of socialist rule under Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro. Oil wealth was squandered, private industry was nationalized, and political dissent was crushed. The result was economic catastrophe and mass emigration.
Was that Washington’s doing? Hardly.
Or take Cuba. The communist regime has been in power for more than 60 years. Its centrally planned economy has produced chronic shortages, repression, and poverty. Millions of Cubans have fled over the decades.
Again, not exactly a mystery.
Then there are the narco-states of Mexico, Central and South America, where gangs exercise more authority than the governments themselves. Weak institutions, corruption, and organized crime have turned entire regions into places where ordinary citizens simply cannot live safely.
But according to Mayor Johnson’s theory, the United States somehow caused all of that.
It’s an astonishing act of pretzel logic.
The truth is far simpler. People migrate to the U.S. because our system works better than theirs.
We have more jobs.
We have more economic opportunities.
We have stronger institutions.
We have a free-market economy and a multiparty democracy.
We have the rule of law.
Countries that abandon those principles for authoritarianism, socialism, or gangster rule tend to fail. Countries that move toward markets, competition, and political pluralism tend to thrive.
You can see this pattern over and over again in history.
China’s economic explosion began when it largely abandoned Maoist central planning and opened parts of its economy to markets. Argentina’s recent economic revival is tied to its efforts to unwind decades of statist policy. Eastern Europe surged after throwing off Soviet-style socialism.
The lesson is not complicated.
Freedom works.
But progressives like Mayor Johnson are trapped in a very different framework. In their worldview, individuals and institutions are rarely responsible for their own failures. Instead, the blame is assigned to “systems” or “structures,” conveniently shifting responsibility elsewhere.
We see the same logic (or lack of same) in law enforcement policy.
Under this ideology, crime is not primarily the fault of criminals. Instead, it is said to be caused by “societal conditions” that supposedly force people into criminal behavior. The offender becomes the victim, and society becomes the culprit. "Blame the victim" is the unspoken mantra.
It’s the same mental model now being applied to immigration.
Countries that collapse politically or economically are treated as victims of American policy rather than the authors of their own misfortune.
And that brings us back to Chicago.
Because this worldview is not just an academic exercise. It has very real consequences for public policy.
Since 2022, more than 50,000 migrants have arrived in Chicago, and the city has spent hundreds of millions of dollars attempting to house, feed, and care for them.
By early 2025, total spending tied to the migrant crisis had climbed to more than $600 million, with funding coming from city, state, and federal sources.
That money does not appear out of thin air.
It comes from taxpayers.
It comes from budgets that might otherwise fund police, infrastructure, or basic city services.
Instead, Chicago residents are being asked to subsidize a humanitarian policy that their mayor insists is morally necessary — because, after all, America caused the problem in the first place.
This is how the “Blame America First” doctrine works in practice.
If the U.S. is responsible for the problems of the world, then American cities must shoulder the burden of fixing them.
If migrants are here because of our foreign policy, then resisting their arrival becomes morally suspect.
And if taxpayers object to spending billions of dollars on the effort, they are accused of lacking compassion.
It’s a remarkably convenient theory for politicians.
But it also happens to be detached from reality.
The overwhelming reason people come to the U.S. is not American foreign policy. It’s the simple fact that this country offers a better chance at prosperity and freedom than the places they are leaving behind.
That is not something to apologize for.
It is something to be proud of.
Yet Mayor Johnson seems to view America’s success not as a strength but as a kind of original sin.
From his perspective, our prosperity must somehow be the product of exploitation or domination abroad.
And that belief explains a lot about how he governs.
It explains why he is willing to spend vast sums of taxpayer money supporting migrants while Chicago itself struggles with crime, debt, and declining population.
It explains why he constantly frames the city’s challenges as the result of external forces rather than local policy choices.
And it explains why Chicago increasingly feels like a city being run according to ideology rather than reality.
Because when your governing philosophy begins with the premise that America is responsible for the world’s problems, the logical conclusion is that American taxpayers must pay to solve them.
Which is exactly what Mayor 6% is trying to do.
The truly astonishing part is that he is not hiding this worldview.
This wasn’t something uncovered by investigative journalists or leaked in a private memo.
It’s what he chose to say publicly.
It’s what he wants people to believe.
And that might be the most troubling part of all.
Because if this is how the mayor of the nation’s third-largest city understands the world, it raises a very uncomfortable question.
How much longer will Chicago remain the third-largest city in the country if he continues to run it this way?
Clearly this is a cynical, craven attempt to shift blame for the unpopular consequences of the sanctuary city policy, as is the anti-immigration policy. Mayor 6% wants to run against Donald Trump, who won’t be on the ballot in next year’s mayoral election. Let’s not let him get away with it.
