BIDEN TO NEW YORK CITY: DROP DEAD
ONLY CONGRESS CAN STOP MIGRANT WAVE, FUND EMERGENCY AID
Pres. Joe Biden' plays the world’s smallest violin for New York as it struggles under the weigh of 100,000 migrants, just some of the millions of migrants his Administration is allowing to flood into the US. Photo Credit & Illustration: JB Nicholas.
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Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams made desperate pleas to Washington this week, for help dealing with the wave of migrants flooding New York City, but Pres. Joe Biden says there’s nothing he can do to stop it or even to help deal with those already here.
"Only Congress can fix the broken immigration system," a White House spokesperson told The Free Lance on Saturday while the president was vacationing in Lake Tahoe. "Only Congress can provide additional funding."
The cold shoulder comes in response to Thursday's request, made in a dramatic live-streamed broadcast and via letter, by Gov. Hochul to Pres. Biden that he “take executive action to address New York's migrant crisis."
“New York cannot continue to do this on its own,” Gov. Hochul pleaded. “It is past time for President Biden to take action and provide New York with the aid needed to continue managing this ongoing crisis.”
“The city is being destroyed by the migrant crisis,” Mayor Adams, a Democrat, warned back in April.
Biden’s refusal to help New York echoes Pres. Gerald Ford’s refusal to bail out a bankrupt New York City in 1975. The result was one of the most memorable headlines in newspaper history. The Oct. 30, 1975 cover of the New York Daily News: “FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD.”
Photo Credit: screenshot, New York Daily News, Oct. 30, 1975.
This time, it's the Federal Government's failure to secure the southern border that has resulted in more than 100,000 migrants swelling into New York City in the last year alone. Hundreds, sometimes thousands, continue to arrive in the City every week. Most rely totally on Government for food, clothing and, most of all, shelter.
"This influx has stretched the City's and the State's resources," Hochul’s letter pleaded, ”and imposed overwhelming demands on the City's homeless shelters."
1,973,092 people crossed the southern border into the US so far this year, according to statistics compiled by the Department of Homeland Security. 2,378,944 crossed in 2022. Another 1,734,686 entered in 2021. That's just legal crossings. The number of illegal crossings rose in July, the Associated Press reported.
And that's all at the southern border alone. Migrants also enter the US via its northern border with Canada, where the environment is sometimes more hostile, with deadly consequences.
As of Aug. 16, 101,200 migrants have arrived in New York City since April 2022, according to the Mayor's office. It was past 104,000 by Friday.
The City bused thousands north to Canada. Nearly 5,000 in January alone. That caused Canada to swiftly negotiate a treaty with the US that stopped it.
58,500 are presently n New York City’s care. Housed at City expense in 193 shelters, including 13 giant tent cities officials call "humanitarian emergency relief and response centers," according to the New York Pandemic Response Institute. The City projects a total cost of more than $12 billion by 2025, "if circumstances do not change."
Some of the migrants have been bussed to New York City by Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott, Gov. Hochul said. Many more arrived by themselves.
Hochul stressed the "crisis originated with the federal government and it must be resolved through the federal government."
With city shelters overflowing, migrants are sleeping on the streets. The City has begun converting churches and schools. City residents, many immigrants or the children of immigrants themselves, have started resisting the Government-assisted mass relocation of tens of thousands of migrants into their neighborhoods. There have been protests, and arrests. More are certain.
The migrant crisis portends a profound shift to the right in state politics, according to a poll from the Siena College Research Institute.
“New Yorkers—including huge majorities of Democrats, Republicans, independents, upstaters and downstaters—overwhelmingly say that the recent influx of migrants to New York is a serious problem for the state,” poll spokesperson Steven Greenberg said.
A “serious problem” that swelled under Democrat rule.
Earlier this month, Mayor Adams blamed fellow Democrat Pres. Biden for not helping.
“While many Republicans in Congress may be holding up critical reform, the White House can help us now,” Adams said. “The federal government must take action.”
Gov. Hochul is as much to blame as Biden is, Adams said on Friday, for “abdicating the state’s responsibility to coordinate a statewide response.”
Among the actions Hochul and Adams say Biden should take, fast-tracking work permission is the most prominent. But two senior Department of Homeland Security officials told NBC News Biden can't do it unilaterally because the law requires asylum seekers wait 180 days. DHS officials also said many of the migrants haven't actually applied for asylum, so they can't legally apply to work either.
Meanwhile, Hochul tabled a proposed “Clean Slate” law passed by the State Legislature in June that would put 2.3 million New Yorkers with old criminal records back to work.
The Governor’s letter to Pres. Biden also asked him to "provide the state and the city with significant financial assistance," and let the city use federal buildings as shelters.
"I cannot," she wrote, "ask New Yorkers to pay for what is fundamentally a federal responsibility."
But she is, because Biden said New York was on its own—literally absent an act of Congress.
The President’s refusal to help New York administratively stands in stark contrast to his instant bailout by fiat of California tech titans and their bankers back in March. The bailout also saved dozens of ritzy California wineries too, as previously detailed by The Free Lance.
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