Chicago's far-left Mayor Brandon Johnson has petitioned the Biden administration to hand out to the nearly half a million illegals living in Illinois.

Johnson, who was elected mayor a year ago, met with business and immigration advocates on Thursday where he touted a letter signed by other leaders across the state of Illinois. 

He declared:

"We need the president to extend the same economic opportunities to our long-term undocumented brothers and sisters. Leading in this moment is what the people of Chicago elected me to do a year ago, and I'm proud that we are doing that today."

According to the Chicago Sun-Times, Johnson has also attempted to gain the support of local business leaders who are excited about the prospect of a greater supply of cheap labor:

In the roundtable, business leaders emphasized the positive economic impact that would follow issuing work permits to the estimated 480,000 undocumented immigrants in Illinois — 3% of the state’s population. That includes 320,000 Mexican residents and 40,000 Black residents from Haiti, Jamaica, Nigeria and other countries, their advocates said.

Work permits are regulated by the federal government, but the slow pace of their delivery has frustrated city and state officials. The federal government offered a slight reprieve last fall by expanding work permit eligibility to 11,000 migrants in the city. More than 38,000 migrants have arrived in Chicago since 2022, according to the city. Many migrants say they need work permits to become independent of government-run shelters.

Chicago is among the many U.S. cities drowning under the weight of tens of thousands of new arrivals, the vast majority of whom have crossed the southern border illegally and are now seeking to gain the right to work. 

Last December, Mayor Johnson begged the Biden administration for additional funding to help ease the cost of the city's illegal immigrant crisis. “We have reached a critical point in this mission that absent real, significant intervention immediately, our local economies are not designed and built to respond to this type of crisis," he said at the time. "We are literally building a system as we go along."

👀Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson begs Biden for help with migrant crisis:

"We have reached a critical point in this mission that absent real, significant intervention immediately, our local economies are not designed and built to respond to this type of crisis." pic.twitter.com/5kHfhtMMof

— Jennie Taer (@JennieSTaer) December 27, 2023

Chicago is far from the only U.S. city struggling to cope with the arrival of tens of thousands of migrants, as millions of illegal aliens pour into the country every year. Most of these individuals are transported on buses by Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who has argued that Texas should not have to shoulder the burden of Joe Biden's open border policy. 

The most prominent, other example is New York City, where Mayor Eric Adams has repeatedly warned that the issue will destroy the city if not properly addressed. However, Adams has continued to hand out freebies to the new arrivals, including free food and shelter, healthcare and even pre-paid credit cards for incidental spending.