Newspaper, TV and radio reporters in cities large and small have used the term NIMBY for as long as anyone in the business can remember. It stands for Not In My Back Yard. It often comes up when local, state or federal governments attempt to locate a new garbage landfill, water/sewer treatment plant, airport runway extensions, new highways and other public works projects.

We are all for that much needed county or regional landfill but not in my back yard.

People scream out at public meetings, “You’re not building that damn landfill next to my property, lower my property values and raise my property taxes all at the same time. Hell no. Build it somewhere else.”

The exact same thing is going on now across the country in so-called “Sanctuary Cities” and “Sanctuary States” from California to New York. Governors and mayors are pushing back hard against President Donald Trump’s recent threats to send thousands of illegal immigrants crossing the southern Mexico/USA border to these “Sanctuary cities and states” that offer local illegals protection from federal deportation. These Sanctuary governors and mayors have long advocated open borders and they universally do not recognize the current border situation as a national emergency as President Trump has declared.

So why not bus these hundred-thousand or so illegals – mostly from Central America – to scattered ‘Sanctuary cities and states?’ As things are now — due to current immigration laws and loopholes — many of these illegals are being released directly into border towns such as El Paso, Texas that are completely ill-equipped to handle such an immediate population explosion. The majority of these illegals are destined to end up homeless and a total burden to hard working, tax paying real Americans.

Certainly local law enforcement will be overwhelmed as will be local jails. Home invasions, robberies and business break-ins will go through the roof. The illegals including gangs will get ahold of guns and Americans will die because of these bad immigration laws. Just about every day on the national news comes some story about an illegal immigrant — deported several times – who kills a police officer or is drunk killing a family somewhere on America’s highways. The examples go on and on.

If the truth was known these ‘Sanctuary cities and states’ are also totally not prepared for a huge influx of humanity. For these new illegals there is no available public housing. They are untrained for any good paying job and they have no identification papers. The overall threat to general public safety is immense.

The hypocrisy of these ‘Sanctuary cities and states’ is undeniable. These ‘Sanctuary’ governors and mayors speak with a forked tongue like a snake in the grass. This situation is catching up with them for the sheer two-facedness of it all.

President Trump may have been kidding at first with his threat to send the border illegals to ‘Sanctuary cities and states’ but now this plan is gaining some steam and it is being seriously looked at.

“Due to the fact that Democrats are unwilling to change our very dangerous immigration laws, we are indeed, as reported, giving strong considerations to placing Illegal Immigrants in Sanctuary Cities only,” the president said over the weekend. “California certainly is always saying ‘Oh we want more people,’ and they want more people in their sanctuary cities, well we’ll give them more people. We’ll give them a lot. We can give them an unlimited supply … Let’s see if they have open arms.”
It’s quite apparent that no ‘Sanctuary state or city’ wants these thousands upon thousands of undocumented people invading there space.

Not in my back yard.

Britt Nelson relocated to Costa Rica in 2011 from Florida, where he served as news editor for the Palatka Daily News, a newspaper owned by the New York Times Regional Newspaper Group (NYT-RNG) for 20 years.

Nelson served the NYT-RNG for 18 years in Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina and Florida as a correspondent, reporter, staff writer, senior staff writer training new reporters, copy editor, page designer, editorial writer, editorial page editor and editorial board member.