The immigration crisis in New York has escalated with the arrival of around 100,000 immigrants in the last year, many of them fleeing Venezuela.
If New York Mayor Eric Adams’ estimates of more than $12 billion in spending over three years are correct, it is clear that neither the city nor the state can solve the problem. “We have passed our breaking point,” he confessed.
Coincidentally, President Joe Biden’s administration launched a lawsuit against Texas Republican Gov. Gregg Abbott for his deployment of border buoys on the Rio Grande, accusing him of violating federal law.
At the bottom of that lawsuit is a central legal principle: the federal government has the responsibility to set, implement, and oversee immigration policy.
That is why it is surprising that, according to the New York Post, the Biden administration has rejected New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s plan to use the Floyd Bennett military camp in Brooklyn to temporarily house the wave of migrants.
The White House argued that there are still “operational and legal” pending in relation to housing asylum seekers, according to the NYP. “Getting the federal government to change its opposition and tell an agency with the Department of the Interior that they now have to accept migrants has been a difficult journey,” Hochul acknowledged.
It is evident that, if the arrival of migrants in New York and other cities is a result of the immigration policies of the federal government, the Biden administration and the federal Congress, they must make a greater effort to solve the problem.
New York City is currently home to more than 57,000 immigrants, all of whom have needs for shelter, beds, food, health care, and education for minors.
Any city in the United States would have economic and logistical problems to attend to this unexpected population, without resources, in order to give them a dignified and humanitarian tension as established by federal laws.
Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a sense of urgency in Washington to resolve the issue.
Disproportionately, the Texas-Mexico border buoy controversy has garnered political and media attention. The immigration crisis in New York remains overwhelmingly a state and local issue.
New York is admired for many reasons, but especially for the iconic Statue of Liberty that has been a beacon of hope for millions of people.
Sadly, the immigration crisis has led the mayor of NYC to ask migrants not to travel to the city.
It is time that, in Washington, where it seems that the criminal proceedings against Donald Trump have exhausted the oxygen of the political class, politicians and legislators rise to the occasion and resolve this tragic social and humanitarian crisis.
