Important Takeaways:

• Tensions over immigration have roiled local politics as funding to care for new arrivals strained public finances
• In Democrat-run Chicago, where the party is gathered to nominate Kamala Harris for president, a fight over migration has roiled local politics — pointing to a key vulnerability for her campaign.
• In Chicago, a different kind of tension is brewing in Black communities over migration. It’s focused not on job markets but on strained public finances — as neighborhoods unable to win enough funds for their own projects balk at the checks written to shelter new arrivals.
• Chicago is estimating funding plans of more than $400 million on the migrant crisis. That’s piling pressure on the city’s budget. The shortfall is projected to widen to almost $1 billion next year, exacerbating a decades-old fight over resources.
• Local leaders — beset with demands for cash to address other issues like homelessness, crime and economic development — are having to make tough choices.
• Alderperson Desmon Yancy, who represents the city’s fifth ward, described voting for a $70 million measure to care for migrants as a necessary but painful decision.
• Research by Kyle Moore, an economist with the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, shows that Illinois has one of the highest Black unemployment levels in the nation. He says those issues, however, are linked to longstanding problems, not a consequence of recent migration.

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