Connecticut Gov. Takes Syrians, Denies Elderly

Connecticut is broke and cutting funds for the elderly, the sick, and the disabled, but that’s not preventing Gov. Dannel Malloy from throwing money at Syrian refugees.

While more than 30 other governors have told the Obama administration they do not want Syrian refugees resettled in their states, Malloy insists that Connecticut has a moral “obligation” to accept them. But Malloy is slashing other priorities to fix a $350 million budget deficit, while each refugee will ultimately cost more than $64,000 over five years, according to the Center for Immigration Studies.

Malloy, newly installed as head of the Democratic Governors’ Association, has yet to offer any specific guidance on how he intends to pay for harboring the refugees. But after pushing through the two of the largest tax hikes in state history — prompting threats by General Electric, the state’s largest employer, to relocate — and still running a shortfall in the hundreds of millions for 2015, his options are rather limited.

“Six months after the second largest tax increase in state history, we still don’t have enough money to pay for all the things we want to buy,” said Zach Jankowski of the Yankee Institute, a Connecticut think tank.

Malloy has taken aim at Connecticut’s hospitals, which he says haven’t been paying their fair share, to the tune of $93 million

Alas, to fix the problem, Malloy has taken aim at Connecticut’s hospitals, which he says haven’t been paying their fair share, to the tune of $93 million by siphoning away Medicaid and federal tax reimbursements, sparking a backlash among health care providers who say the resulting burden will fall on the poor and sick.

Malloy’s deficit reduction plan also calls for the closure of several vocational training centers for the developmentally disabled and cuts to a program fitting school buses with seat belts.

But such fiscal technicalities have not thwarted Malloy’s desire to appease Democrat Party bosses and their goal of remodeling the electorate into one that is wholly dependent on government purse strings.

As the presiding head of the Democratic Governors Association, he has “led” on the issue of refugees by going above and the standard measure of liberal zealotry and ushering into Connecticut Syrians other states don’t want. In November, he personally welcomed a Syrian family at the airport that Indiana had refused to settle.

For good measure, he took a below-the-belt-shot at Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, who had expressed security concerns about resettling refugees that even several Democratic governors shared.

“This is the same guy who signed a homophobic bill in the spring surrounded by homophobes,” Malloy said at the time. ”So I’m not surprised by anything the governor does.”

Malloy’s office declined requests for comment.

But the governor’s actions should not come as a surprise given his track record of promoting immigrant services, such as drivers licenses for illegals, at whatever cost.

Under Malloy, Connecticut has fashioned itself as one of the most immigrant-friendly states in the country. One in 7 of the state’s 2.6 million residents are foreign-born, and nearly half of that population are naturalized citizens and eligible to vote, according the American Immigration Council.

That friendliness has been extended even more so to the state’s 108,000 undocumented residents, who constitute 5.1 percent of the state’s workforce and whose children are now eligible to receive in-state tuition and financial aid, even though the governor’s new budget cuts $22 million from the reserves of state colleges and universities.

Malloy has shrugged off concerns that terrorists may use the refugee process to infiltrate the country, saying after the shootings in San Bernardino, California, the U.S. citizenry was already the most violent in the world. By implication, that would mean importing thousands of people from jihadi countries would actually make us safer.

Perhaps the state’s three self-proclaimed “sanctuary cities” that refuse to enforce federal immigration laws would make a good case study to test this theory moving ahead. Two of them, Hartford and New Haven, are among the top 50 most dangerous cities in the U.S., according to Neighborhood Scout.

If an influx of jihadi migrants indeed makes these cities safer, we’ll know Malloy knows something the rest of us don’t.