Gavin Newsom invites world's homeless to California | Hacker News Reader

Gavin Newsom invites world's homeless to California

yahoo.com

7 pointslando23198 comments

  Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
  With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
  Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
  A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
  Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
  Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
  Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
  The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
  “Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
  With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
  Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
  The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
  Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
  I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

I don't understand what the alternative policy would be. Obviously California has no control over federal immigration and border policy. So, if there's a homeless person in California, what do you do? Scan their ID and ensure that, not only are they an American citizen, but that they're a long-term California resident and... then what? Hope Georgia makes their assistance cushy enough to entice them away from California? In practice, just watch the encampments of economically disenfranchised people grow? Not that, at least from afar, Newsom seems not to have managed much about that. But the cynical parochial attitude of this piece does not seem to offer any solutions either.

> So, if there's a homeless person in California, what do you do?

Well, traditionally, subject to them police abuse to get them to move at least out of sight if not out of the state, or buy them one way bus tickets to the farthest point possible, with the threat of some kind of punishment if they hang around to make them someone else's problem.

CA is one of the biggest states in the nation with a sizable border, and it can absolutely affect federal immigration and border policy should it so desire.

That's not even a matter here. Many homeless are USA citizens. If you offer them food, drugs, and allow stealing from stores with impunity - they will come and take advantage of your policies. Try doing it in rural Texas - they will have your guts for garters.

So we should all adopt the Texas approach? Starve them out and abuse them, zero tolerance for petty theft and then what? Put them in prison and spend $30k+ a year in taxpayer money to keep them there until they die?

It costs California 60k per tent

I can't find a source for that claim. Considering it costs California $80k to house a prisoner, 60k for a tent in a parking lot doesn't pass the smell test.

Yes, I can see it now. The world's homeless are already lining up to get their passports or visas and liquidating their stock portfolios to buy a plane ticket to LAX.

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