Not since President Richard Nixon went to China to cozy up to the communists there in 1972 has an American politician gotten away with reversing his position as easily as Governor Ned Lamont did this month.

In two national television interviews Feb. 2 the governor, a Democrat, said his party had been slow to confront illegal immigration, immigration policy should be much stricter, the southern border should be closed and he had offered President Biden the use of the Connecticut National Guard for border security but the president had declined.

No one in journalism or politics (if there is much difference these days), nationally or in Connecticut, seems to have noticed that ever since taking office in 2019 Lamont has been presiding without objection over a "sanctuary state" — that is, a state whose law and policy are to prevent enforcement of federal immigration law. Connecticut law and policy are that anyone who breaks into the country illegally and reaches the state should be above the law.

Connecticut forbids its law enforcement officers from cooperating with federal immigration officers. The state issues driver's licenses to illegal immigrants to facilitate their lawbreaking. Connecticut has four self-proclaimed "sanctuary cities" that similarly protect illegal immigrants against enforcement of federal immigration law, New Haven being most aggressive in nullification.

Indeed, the governor seems to have forgotten — and no one on his staff seems to have reminded him — that if the president had accepted his offer of the Connecticut National Guard to secure the border, guard members might have been breaking their own state's law, though maybe they would be permitted to do in Texas and thereabouts what they are forbidden to do back home.

How silly and insincere for the governor: To advocate closing the southern border while his own state's borders are, by state law, left wide open to any illegal entrant. Worse, how confident the governor must be that no news organization will ever challenge him on his grotesque contradiction and test the sincerity of his new pose.

Connecticut will know that the governor's new pose is sincere when he proposes legislation requiring all law-enforcement officers and public officials in the state to cooperate with federal immigration authorities and prohibiting issuance of government identification documents to illegal immigrants, thereby ending the state's nullification policy and terminating its “sanctuary” status.

And Connecticut will know that its minority party in the General Assembly, the Republicans, have regained consciousness when they propose such legislation as well.

Unfortunately hypocrisy about illegal immigration isn't confined to Connecticut.

Just next door New York City is screeching over the cost and inconvenience of housing hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants from the Biden administration's open-borders policy.

Mayor Eric Adams says the migrants are costing the city hundreds of millions of dollars, exhausting its emergency facilities, overwhelming its schools and causing crime. The city is suing bus companies that have taken the migrants north at the instigation of Texas officials who inform them that free shelter and food, and even cash stipends await them.

Yet New York still proclaims itself a "sanctuary city." So does Chicago, even while being similarly overwhelmed.

The cost of this political correctness is huge and increasing by the hour.

Why does the United States suffer so much illegal immigration?

Yes, some migrants are fleeing political persecution, but not many. Most are fleeing miserable conditions in poor countries in Central and South America, like Venezuela, which used to be rich but has been impoverished by leftist totalitarianism.

But the main reason the United States suffers so much illegal immigration is simply because the country allows it. Migrants are rightly confident that they can bypass proper procedures for entry and still get in, stay in, and quickly achieve food, shelter and medical care at government expense, as they do in Connecticut.

This isn't the immigration of Statue of Liberty days, when unfettered entry for migrants obliged them to support themselves. It's the immigration of the modern, politically correct welfare state.

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. He can be reached at CPowell@cox.net.