The scenes of asylum-seekers living on the streets of New York City are without parallel in America since the Great Depression.
The migrant crisis in New York City is nearing a breaking point with shelters at capacity and asylum seekers now being forced to sleep on the street. pic.twitter.com/DHNUCKnMyU
— CBS Evening News (@CBSEveningNews) August 2, 2023
'Migrant crisis in New York City worsens as asylum seekers are forced to sleep on sidewalks.' From @CBSNews: https://t.co/YNOBVgs3uB
— Byron York (@ByronYork) August 3, 2023
Thousands of people who crossed the border have come to New York looking for the city to fulfill its promise of being a “sanctuary city.” Now, they’re squatting in the streets because after Joe Biden invited them, he turned his back on them. He sneered at the over-burdened cities that can’t possibly handle the numbers of asylum seekers coming from the border.
And the consequences of virtue-signaling how compassionate you are — as long as the homeless illegal immigrants squat somewhere else, like Texas — are finally coming home to roost in New York.
Related: Joe Biden Turns His Back on Democratic Mayors as the Border Crisis Moves North
This is a crisis because Joe Biden is a weak, politically inept president who can’t stand up to the open-borders lobby that has been pushing to allow as many people who can make it to the border to come in and make themselves at home. They don’t want limits on migration. And they don’t care one whit about the “migrants,” or “asylum seekers,” or whatever they want to call them. This is about opening the borders — all borders.
They sure as hell don’t care about the United States government or its citizens.
“It’s downgrading everything,” Councilwoman Vickie Paladino told ‘Fox & Friends’ co-host Carley Shimkus Thursday. “I’m born and raised New Yorker. This is all New York. We are in the heart of all New York, and when you see what they’re doing to old New York, what New York should be, the heartbeat of this country, and they’re killing it. They’re killing the heartbeat of this country.”
The Roosevelt Hotel is an arrival center for all migrants, where they can get food, vaccinations, and meet with caseworkers, city officials said, but it is now at max capacity which is prompting many to seek shelter outside the building.
It is also a humanitarian relief center that only houses children and families, who go to the front of the line upon arrival. Those waiting outside are adult asylum seekers, who do not get placement at the Roosevelt.
“The overcrowding is absolutely, absolutely out of control,” Paladino said.
Mayor Eric Adams is demanding that Biden declare a state of emergency. “This is coming to a neighborhood near you,” he warned.
Democratic New York City Councilman Robert Holden called the situation “absurd.”
“Come up with a plan. We haven’t heard a plan. It’s absurd,” Holden said. “Just let in 100,000 migrants, foreign nationals, unvetted foreign nationals to New York City and say, ‘Here, take them.’”
“We’ll have to spend $8 million a day in New York City, and again, we haven’t heard a plan from this administration,” he continued. “Joe Biden is asleep at the wheel. The whole administration is.”
The migrants have been drawn to the city after word circulated in the camps along the U.S.-Mexico border that the city was offering free food and shelter to all comers. New York is the only city in the country that has a “right to shelter” law that obliges it to provide housing for anyone who requests it.
Mr. Adams, a Democrat, has openly sparred with the Biden administration over its policy of allowing tens of thousands of asylum seekers into the country in recent months under a humanitarian parole program. Migrants who make an appointment via a mobile phone app called CBP One are interviewed at the port of entry and released pending a later hearing — often years later — on their asylum application.
Biden is AWOL. The president won’t even acknowledge the crisis. And he certainly won’t send any money to defray the $4 billion it will cost the city over the next two years to care for the asylum seekers.
But for all the noise Mayor Eric Adams has made, all the feds have offered is a Department of Homeland Security liaison to help coordinate a sad pittance of federal assistance.
And Team Biden hasn’t even made good on that, a week after DHS head Alejandro Mayorkas promised it.
Plainly, they can’t be bothered: New York City will inevitably deliver millions of votes and scores of millions of bucks for Biden’s re-election, no matter how he disses Adams and the whole town.
Nobody expects the liaison to be worth a damn: It’s the most pathetic token of help imaginable. But failing to even make good on that token only compounds the insult.
Biden can’t shut the border as long as he’s under the thumb of the open-borders lobby, so the prospect of this crisis getting worse is improving every day.
Looks like Bidenvilles are coming soon to a city near you.
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