New York is a Hot Mess and Everyone is Pointing Fingers

FAIR Take | September 2023

New York City has been on the receiving end of 104,400 migrants over the past year or so and is projecting that it will incur a three-year cost of $12 billion as a result. All across the city, taxpayers and homeowners who have not yet joined the exodus from New York are revolting against the makeshift migrant shelters – 200 and counting – that are being set up in just about every neighborhood in all five boroughs. And, if many Staten Islanders had their way, it would be four boroughs. The borough has long been something of a stepchild, and Congresswoman Nicole Malliotakis’ displeasure with migrant shelters being set up in her district is leading to a call for Staten Island to secede from New York City.  “I think Staten Island would like to have an opportunity to self-govern. The reality is the City Council and the state Legislature would need to let Staten Island go. I hope they do reconsider this,” she said.

And that may not even be the worst of the city’s struggles to deal with the migrant crisis deliberately unleashed by the Biden administration. New York City schools are set to reopen this week and are expecting 20,000 new migrant children who don’t speak English, may not have permanent addresses, and who qualify for school nutrition programs. As of last week, the Department of Education (DOE) had no plan to deal with this influx, while DOE Chancellor David Banks was enjoying some (no doubt) well-deserved R&R on Martha’s Vineyard. DOE may not have a plan, but rest assured that New York State Attorney General Letitia James and State Education Commissioner Betty Rosa have a lawsuit ready to file against any school district that does not fully accommodate every migrant student seeking to register.

Meanwhile, the people New Yorkers elected to solve problems – most notably Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams – are battling each other, rather than the Biden administration, which steadfastly refuses to stanch the flow of migrants entering the country illegally. Gov. Hochul dashed off a 12-page “scathing” letter to the mayor criticizing his handling of the migrant crisis that threatens to overwhelm the city. In it, she complained that “[t]he city has not made timely requests for regulatory changes, has not always promptly shared necessary information with the state, has not implemented programs in a timely manner, and has not consulted the state before taking certain actions.” Mayor Adams pointed fingers right back at Gov. Hochul, slamming her for her refusal to allow him to ship migrants out of his self-declared sanctuary city and spread them around the rest of the state to communities that want no part of sanctuary policies.

Both of them did point fingers at the Biden administration, but not for its refusal to close the border. Rather, they agreed that the administration was at fault for not sending more federal dollars to the city and state, and for not issuing work authorization fast enough to the migrants. “As Governor Hochul has repeatedly said, this crisis will only abate once the federal government takes action on work authorization that allows migrants to be resettled permanently,” her spokesperson complained. Neither the governor, nor her spokesperson, explained how expediting work authorization would do anything other than exacerbate the problem since nearly all of the “asylum-seekers” are actually economic migrants looking for jobs, or how it would help the city’s effort to shelter or provide education and other services to them.

Now this is where things get really absurd. The guy most responsible for this disaster did not take kindly to even the mild criticism of the federal government’s role in New York’s crisis. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas dashed off his own irate letters to Gov. Hochul and Mayor Adams based on the findings of his department’s “week-long” assessment of how the city is managing the influx of migrants. “The structural issues include governance and organization of the migrant operations, including issues of authority, structure, personnel, and information flow. The operational issues include the subjects of data collection, planning, case management, communications, and other aspects of day-to-day operations,” fumed Mayorkas, as though better data collection would solve the city’s problem.

Nowhere in Mayorkas’ letters did he acknowledge that his own policies that actively encourage illegal immigration were in any way responsible for the problem. Nor did Hochul or Adams in their meek responses to Mayorkas’ accusations of mismanagement. Rather than demand that the Biden administration close the border and end the abuse of our asylum, Gov. Hochul instead requested that Mayorkas identify more federal land in New York City where more shelters can be set up. For his part, Adams requested “a decompression strategy at the border” – whatever the heck that means – and, of course, more federal aid to the city.

In an effort to turn down the heat a bit, Gov. Hochul requested and was granted a meeting at the White House with Mayorkas and the president’s chief of staff, Jeff Zients, to discuss her state’s plight. After what the governor described as a “frank and productive conversation” the administration agreed to literally chase down migrants in order to give them work authorization documents. Once again, the notion that perhaps the federal government should stop letting so many migrants flood into the country was apparently not broached by the governor, nor offered by Mayorkas and Zients.

In short, the response of New York’s political leaders (including the palpable silence from the two most powerful congressional Democrats, Brooklyn residents Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries) amounts to a modern-day version of Nero fiddling while Rome burned. The crisis that threatens to bankrupt New York City and hasten the departure of taxpaying residents cannot be addressed, much less solved, with more federal dollars, faster issuance of work authorization, or new locations to erect migrant shelters.

Reversing the already considerable damage that has been inflicted on New York requires that local leaders (all of whom are from the same party as the president) honestly identify the cause of the problem, namely the administration’s reckless open-border policies and contempt for the rule of law. They must then lead the effort to force the administration to change course, even if it means reaching across party lines and working with people like Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott.

Until they are prepared to take those steps, Hochul and Adams are merely adding farce to what is already a tragedy.