Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador mocked Texas Governor Greg Abbott this week over the recent lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice against the state seeking the removal of various border barriers including buoys and fencing.
Fifty-four elected officials in New York City have sent a letter to President Joe Biden to address the influx of illegal immigrants in the city, asking him to declare a federal state of emergency so that the illegal immigrants can legally work in the country.
"We are elected officials from New York City requesting your help. Our City is experiencing an unprecedented migrant influx, with a surge of asylum seekers arriving here in numbers never seen before in history. Our City is at a breaking point," wrote New York City Assemblywoman Jenifer Rajkumar.
"We take pride in New York being a beacon of hope for immigrants, but the influx of migrants is so great that the City is running out of resources. New York City is being forced to reduce services for its people."
Since Spring of 2022, buses of illegal immigrants, sent from the southern border in Texas, have arrived regularly in the city. Many are asylum seekers from Venezuela escaping the socialist country's economic collapse, and New York elected officials have welcomed them.
While the self-declared "sanctuary city" already had difficulties housing its 60,000-plus homeless population, officials set about finding housing for tens of thousands of asylum seekers.
By October 2022, New York City Mayor Eric Adams declared a state of emergency in the city. According to his office, the illegal immigrant influx could nearly double the number of people the already overtaxed shelter system needed to serve, and cost $1 billion within a fiscal year.
"We need help, and we need it now," Mr. Adams said. “New York City is doing our part, and now others must step up and join us.”
Emergency Powers
Last week, the city announced it would set up a shelter for 1,000 illegal immigrants in the parking lot of a state psychiatric hospital. The special use case was made possible by the state of emergency, which allows for use of additional resources without additional red tape.
A federal state of emergency would allow federal agencies to work with and fund the housing and services for the illegal immigrants.
"The federal government could then provide migrants with assistance such as shelter, food relief, healthcare, legal aid, and transportation," Ms. Rajkumar wrote in her letter.
The 54 Democrat lawmakers also requested that the Biden administration allow the illegal immigrants to work in the country.
"The federal government must expedite the issuance of Employment Authorization Documents. It is a common sense and bi-partisan fix. Asylum seekers are arriving eager to work, and our Nation has 10 million job openings with 3.5 million fewer people in the workforce than projected pre-pandemic," the letter reads. "We ask that the White House take executive actions to expedite work authorization, such as classifying asylum seekers as refugees, expanding Temporary Protected Status, increasing access to humanitarian parole, and surging the number of officers processing asylum claims."
The letter makes no reference to curbing the number of illegal immigrants entering the country or city, nor does it differentiate between legal and illegal immigrants. It instead makes requests that the federal government make it simpler for them to cross the southern border illegally, and to relocate them in all parts of the country, while providing additional funding for New York City.
The city has already received $104.6 million through the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which the lawmakers say equates to just 13 days of relief.
The city expects to have spent $4.3 billion by June 2024.
"While we welcome immigrants to our City, the current unstructured state of immigration policy and response needs to end. There needs to be a system of rules in place to manage the migrant crisis," the letter reads. "That is why we are pleading for the White House to step in a take leadership over the influx of asylum seekers."
"We believe that with your leadership, we can turn this crisis into opportunity and that this can become one of history's greatest success stories."
Housing Crisis
The city is currently sheltering about 52,000 illegal immigrants, and officials say more continue to arrive by the week.
As a "sanctuary" city, New York is one of several across the country now that have declared it will not cooperate with federal authorities to arrest and deport illegal immigrants.
The city's "right to shelter" law mandates that homeless families must be given a bed the same day, and adults within a day. As the city runs out of beds, it is scrambling to create temporary shelter spaces wherever possible, be it a hospital parking lot, airplane hangars, parks, or a racetrack.
Most of these ideas have been met with strong pushback from communities. City residents, who are already feeling the housing crunch and are unable to find permanent housing of their own, have been shocked by city plans to turn their gyms, schools, and parks into housing for the illegal immigrants.
The city had plans to further bus illegal immigrants north of the city, but local officials in those areas quickly pushed back. For the most part, the city is attempting to find the necessary amount of shelter with city resources. If the numbers continue to increase, exacerbating the issue and prompting federal intervention, the trend could be unlikely to reverse.
Recently, New York Mayor Eric Adams announced that the city has printed thousands of flyers it plans to distribute at the U.S.-Mexico border. The flyer has a simple message to illegal border-crossers: Don’t come to New York.
The headline is in all caps: “UPDATES TO ASYLUM-SEEKERS FROM THE CITY OF NEW YORK.” The flyer goes on to say that more than 90,000 migrants have come to the city since April of last year. Now, the handout says, “There is no guarantee we will be able to provide shelter and services to new arrivals.” The flyer goes on to warn, “Housing in NYC is very expensive,” as is the cost of “food, transportation and other necessities.”
And then the message: “Please consider another city as you make your decision about where to settle in the U.S.”
Adams also announced that New York is going to get tough with migrants who are already in the city and are staying in its shelters. “In the coming days, the city will begin providing 60 days’ notice to adult asylum-seekers to find alternative housing paired with intensified casework services to help adult asylum-seekers explore other housing options and take the next step in their journey,” a city statement said. “Each asylum-seeker given notice will have multiple touchpoints with caseworkers over their 60 days to discuss their options and plan their next steps.” The short version of that is: We’re kicking you out. Find somewhere to go.
Adams, a Democrat, has come a long way since 2019, when he was the borough president of Brooklyn and, like some others in his city’s government, wanted to attack then-President Donald Trump’s policy on immigration. “Make no mistake, New York City will ALWAYS stand up to Donald Trump and call out his cynical plots to divide our country,” Adams tweeted on April 16, 2019. “To anyone in the world fleeing hatred and oppression, the ultimate city of immigrants wants you to remember: You’re ALWAYS welcome here.”
As it turned out, ALWAYS did not actually mean always. It didn’t even mean five years. Now, just four years after his everlasting commitment, Adams is telling illegal immigrants to stay away.
“There is no room in New York,” Adams said back in January. “New York cannot take more. We can’t. No city deserves what is happening.” In the case of New York, what is happening is “more than 90,000” migrants since April 2022.
Ninety thousand migrants! What a terrible burden. Now consider this, from the government of El Paso, Texas, a city far smaller and with far fewer resources than New York: “The number of people released to the City of El Paso and local nongovernment organizations (NGOs; i.e., humanitarian agencies) has grown from approximately 250 per day in early August [2022] to as high as over 1,000 per day during the month of September 2022. The number fluctuates daily and is currently averaging 900 per day.”
El Paso’s burden dwarfs anything New York City has experienced. And El Paso is, of course, just one city along the U.S.-Mexico border. Collectively, border communities have had to deal with millions of illegal crossers since the rush began with Joe Biden’s inauguration as president of the United States.
That brings us to Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas. When Abbott first offered illegal border-crossers, whom the Biden administration allowed to stay in the U.S., free transport to New York, some dismissed it as a stunt, or worse. But Abbott’s move forced self-righteous New Yorkers to face the fact that their commitment to being a “sanctuary city” only goes so far. There’s no way, even with all of their resources, New York can offer sanctuary to even a small portion of the migrants illegally crossing into Texas, much less the whole U.S.-Mexico border.
Abbott proved to Adams and other Democrats in sanctuary cities around the country that their rhetoric means nothing when confronted by the true scale of the illegal entry problem. Perhaps it made them feel good to talk about sanctuary and welcoming and unity in opposition to the hated Trump. But it won’t solve the immense problem that President Biden’s policies have created.
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