Joe Biden is a coward. This much is clear from his shameful response to pleas for help from New York Governor Kathy Hochul who is begging Biden to send financial assistance to her state to deal with the 100,000 asylum seekers and illegal aliens who have traveled from the border to New York City.
Hochul sent a letter last week to Biden asking the feds to speed up processing migrants and give them green cards so they can work. This would take some of the burden of caring for them off of the state. She’s also requesting more money to deal with the immediate crisis.
“The reality is that we’ve managed thus far without substantive support from Washington, and despite the fact that this is a national, and indeed an inherently federal issue,” Hochul said. “But New York has shouldered this burden for far too long.”
Related: N.Y. Gov. Hochul Calls for Help From Biden to Deal With Migrants, Blames Texas for the Crisis
What was Biden’s response? Blame Congress.
“Without Congressional action, this Administration has been working to build a safe, orderly, and humane immigration system and has worked to identify ways to improve efficiencies and maximize the resources the federal government can provide to communities across the country to support the flow of migrants,” a White House spokesperson said in a statement.
This is pretty much what the administration had to say in the first weeks of taking office. “Safe, orderly, humane immigration system” was a slogan created in the first days of the administration to contrast the Biden administration policy on asylum seekers with the supposedly “heartless” and “cruel” policies of Donald Trump.
Apparently, Biden is still getting a lot of mileage out of it.
“We will continue to partner with communities across the country to ensure they can receive the support they need,” the spokesperson wrote. “Only Congress can provide additional funding for these efforts, which this Administration has already requested, and only Congress can fix the broken immigration system.”
In the immortal words of Secretary of Defense Albert Nimziki in the film Independence Day, “That’s not entirely accurate.” Joe Biden could declare an emergency in New York, which would loosen the federal purse strings and make money available to both the city of New York and the state. But Biden is in the middle of a re-election campaign and being identified too closely with a crisis caused by his own lax border policies would not be “good optics,” as the political consultants say.
A recent Sienna poll released this past week shows how fraught an issue the asylum seekers are — even in sky-blue New York.
A significant majority of voters in the city, 58%, said “New Yorkers have already done enough for new migrants and should now work to slow the flow of migrants to New York.”
Just 38%, presumably including the lady in the harbor, said “New Yorkers should accept new migrants and work to assimilate them into New York.”
The city numbers match up with those statewide, where 58% of voters say New York has done enough while 36% favor acceptance and assimilation. Even Democrats were split on the question, 48%-48%.
“What New York City is facing right now is a municipality that is carrying a national issue on its back,” said Camille Joseph Verlack, the mayor’s chief of staff on Mornings On 1 on Friday.
“This crisis originated with the federal government and it must be resolved through the federal government,” said Gov. Kathy Hochul on Thursday in a public address to New York State.
But Biden is not going to do any favors for New York City Mayor Eric Adams or Governor Hochul. He’s too busy using both those politicians for cover as he tries to avoid being stuck to the asylum-seeker tar baby.
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