(ConservativeSense.com) – New York City Mayor Eric Adams arrived in El Paso last Saturday to visit the U.S.-Mexico border for a first-hand experience of the situation.
Over the last few months, New York City has taken in thousands of migrants, putting a strain on public resources and forcing the city to submit a request for emergency mutual aid to the State of New York for assistance to shelter them. With the city in economic decline since 2020 and undergoing rising crime rates, the migrant crisis throws extra fuel on the fire.
In a recent statement issued on January 13th, Adams said “more people arrive than we have ever seen” with an average of “400 people each day” over the last week. On a single day, 835 entered the city, “the largest… we’ve seen to date.” According to Adams, the surge of asylum seekers “is pushing New York City to the brink.”
After visiting the border this weekend with El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser, Adams said “we need federal support” and declared the situation a “national crisis.” Just the week prior, Adams stated “there’s no more room” in the Big Apple as shelters have hit capacity. While at the border, he noted that asylum seekers seem to have a “false impression” of what to expect when they arrive, citing websites advertising “streets… paved with gold,” that “there’s automatic employment,” and that “you’re automatically going to be living in a hotel.”
The migrants are being housed in hotels across the city, and a $275 million contract with the Hotel Association of New York City (representing 300 hotels with up to 80,000 rooms) was signed to shelter 5000 more in up to 55 smaller hotels.
Not only must the people crossing the border be given more accurate information, but Adams also believes there must be a coordinated effort to deal with the crisis, calling the separate responses of El Paso and New York “disjointed,” and pleading for FEMA to assist.
Whether or not the federal government will respond remains to be seen, but what is certain is that the economic situation of New York City won’t see much improvement with the added pressure of caring for the new arrivals.
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