Happy Days Here Again? Labor Day Hokum From Hochul

Just in time for Labor Day, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced a jobs program for tens of thousands of border crossers and illegal aliens pouring into her sanctuary state weekly, even as 380,000 New Yorkers remain unemployed.

The Democrat governor authorized the New York State Department of Labor (DOL) to connect migrants with employers. “DOL career experts will work with individuals to assess skills, work history, education, career interests and more, and connect them with employers across the state,” Hochul said in a statement.

While quixotically supporting Biden administration policies that have stuffed the Big Apple with more than 100,000 migrants over the past year, Hochul called on Washington to “expedite work authorizations through executive actions like granting and extending Temporary Protected Status.” She is also lobbying for still broader use of “humanitarian parole” to move more migrants into the country.

Hochul got a receptive hearing at the White House this week when federal officials pledged to practically chase down migrants and shove work authorization papers in their pockets. The administration announced it will work with the state and New York City in September on “a month of action” to get more aliens onto payrolls.

Among the initiatives, the White House said federal officials plan to email and text work-eligible asylum-seekers “with information on how to apply for employment authorization.”

Not a word was said, however, about the 380,000 legal New York residents who are unemployed. The jobless rate in the Empire State stood at 5.3 percent, compared with 4.9 percent last year. Those numbers do not include long-term unemployed who have fallen out of the labor pool.

It would be nice if Hochul and Biden & Co. expended as much effort on behalf of citizens who are out of work. U.S. Labor Department statistics released today counted 6.4 million of them as the national unemployment rose to 3.8 percent last month. Another 5.4 million Americans are not in the labor force but want a job.

Flooding the labor pool with millions more low-skilled, less-educated migrants won’t mean “Happy Days Are Here Again.”