Hawaii’s Demented Democratic Resistance

If you were to nominate a jurisdiction for being the most resistant to Donald Trump’s immigration policies, particularly those large-scale deportations, where would it be? True-blue heavies like California or New York or Colorado? Or just maybe so-called sanctuary cities like New York, Chicago, or LA? 

The jury is still out, but an early leader for the most resistant place is Hawaii.

Hawaii is one of the bluest states in the union. Some 34 percent of registered voters are Democrats, versus only 18 percent Republican. A whopping 43 percent are officially unaffiliated but tend to vote Democrat. About 61 percent of voters chose Kamala Harris over Trump in the last election. The governor is (always) a serious Democrat. The state legislature is handily controlled (always) by the Democratic Party.

So it is no surprise that, while most centers of resistance have chosen a passive cooperation model for dealing with ICE and the mass deportations, Hawaii has gone to insane lengths trying to place stumbling blocks in front of ICE. Along with other initiatives, the legislature has put on a fast track the immigration-related bills advocates believe are critical to putting up walls to protect immigrants from an administration eager to see them gone—a very fast track, cutting ahead of 122 previously submitted bills on various topics.

• HB 440 would push back on a Trump order rescinding a policy limiting where immigration enforcement actions can take place (such as schools, churches, courts, hospitals). 
• HB 438 would appropriate funds so people in immigration court have access to an attorney. 
• HB 457 would require state and local law enforcement agencies to notify people in custody, in their native language, of their rights, before immigration agents interview them. That bill would also require a person’s attorney to be notified before immigration authorities take them into custody. 
• HB 22 would prevent state and local law enforcement agencies from collaborating with federal authorities on immigration enforcement. 
• HB 73 would prohibit Hawaiian public lands from being used for immigrant detention centers. 

It’s not just new laws. Before leaving for Washington D.C. to testify against RFK, Jr., the governor announced he was budgeting $20 million for the Attorney General’s Office to support lawsuits opposing Trump policies, including immigration. The ACLU of Hawaii said workshops are being planned to keep immigrants apprised of their legal rights.

You’d think all this and the liberal angst which accompanies it would be aimed at a large illegal population. But Hawaii has only about 41,000 illegals in the whole state, about half of whom are from the Philippines. And ICE? They have arrested for deportation all of 20 people to date.

In addition to over-reaction, hypocrisy is also well-practiced by the Democratic government of Hawaii. While fighting back against the Federal government over immigration, the Democrats are more than happy to suck up funding at the public teat. Direct Department of Defense spending injects $7.2 billion into the Hawaiian economy, nearly 8 percent of the state’s GDP. Hawaii is second in the United States, behind only the Pentagon’s host state itself, for the highest defense spending as a share of state GDP.

Of course, government personnel spend a great deal in the local economy. Many local residents are directly employed by DoD or contractors, and they pay for utilities, groceries, and services like anyone else. Bases need plumbers and engineers. Even more than tourism, this large sector of the economy is a government project.

It’s not the only government-controlled portion of the economy. Public benefits in Hawaii are the highest in the nation; in 2013 an average welfare recipient in the state took home $49,175 worth of welfare (all of which goes untaxed). For the last 11 years, Hawaii spent more on welfare, about 20 percent of the state budget, than on education. More than one out of 10 people in Hawaii get food stamps; the number of those receiving subsidized food is higher if you include free lunches at school and meals for the elderly. No wonder that Hawaii vies with California for the nation’s highest state income tax. Hawaii is nearly always one of the top states in terms of homelessness, poverty, unemployment, food insecurity, and diabetes. The people behind those statistics live in a relationship with the state’s ultra-rich that is mostly like those little fish that swim inside a shark’s gills.

The federal government owns about 20 percent of all the land in the archipelago, and the state government owns about 50 percent of the rest. “Do Not Enter — U.S. Government Property” signs are everywhere outside the towns. There are also plenty of private roads and gated communities to separate the rich from the poor. Larry Ellison, the owner of Oracle, owns almost the entire island of Lanai. Not everyone is so exalted. Home ownership rates in Hawaii are among the lowest in the nation. A third of the state’s residents are thinking of moving away due to high costs. Never mind California, this is what the results of the great Democrats’ Experiment looks like.

Then there is Lahaina, on Maui. The city was nearly completely destroyed by fire a year and a half ago. Over 2,000 properties with residential structures were either destroyed or suffered major damage. Those properties include multifamily buildings, meaning the number of individual units damaged or destroyed is likely higher. Yet after 18 months only a total of three of those homes have been rebuilt. The problem lies in bureaucratic red tape, specifically in high costs and long waits for building permits that were instituted over the past few years. County officials have only approved a fraction of the disaster recovery building permits submitted by homeowners, not exactly a model for California or anywhere else.

And worse yet, because of new, stricter laws, many people will be forced to rebuild under more burdensome restrictions than when those homes were first constructed, meaning many of them cannot be built back in the way they were previously. Locals contrast what’s happening on Maui with when Hurricane Iniki destroyed some 2,000 homes on the island of Kauai in 1992. Most of those homes were rebuilt within a year.

You’d think that with all those issues on the to-do list leaders’ attention might be focused somewhere other than on a handful of illegals getting busted by ICE. But then you wouldn’t be a member of the Democratic resistance of Hawaii.