The Democrats who run New York were solidly behind the Sanctuary policies that have created a nightmare as thousands of migrants are taking them up on their offer of free housing and services. The reality of migrants sleeping on city streets and taxpayers on the hook for billions of dollars to support them is now hitting home, and the Democrat solidarity over the come one, come all policy is starting to crack.
When a delegation of fellow Democrats from Queens demanded a sit down with Mayor Eric Adams to discuss the crisis, he went back at them. In a lengthy questionnaire sent as a prerequisite to him agreeing to meet, Adams demanded to know what they were doing to address the problem.
“To maximize everyone’s time, the mayor has asked that each elected official submit answers to the following questions ahead of the meeting,” Adams’ staff said in an email accompanying the questionnaire.
“The No. 1 question I'm asking everyone now – did you go to Washington to get us more money?” Adams asked the Queens delegation, which included City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams. “What have you done for the migrants and where would you like for me to house them?” the nine-question checklist queried. He also wanted to know if the lawmakers had supported his call for a national emergency, visited a migrant site in the last year, suggested alternative sites, or called on the federal government to stop migrants from being bused to the city.
“His back is against the wall, and his frustration is certainly showing in that email,” said Donovan Richards, the Queens borough president who received the questionnaire, but did not attend the meeting. The Democrat said he initially laughed at the questions.
Perhaps the residents of New York should send the mayor a questionnaire asking what he thought would happen if he threw open the door to thousands of migrants, and how he expected to pay for their upkeep. They should also ask if he thought about the taxpayers before he promoted his Sanctuary City policy to the flood of immigrants now taking him up on his offer.
Criticizing President Biden didn’t help his cause either. As the migrants poured in, Adams called out the administration for its open border policy and demanded Washington dollars to pay for the estimated 95,000 immigrants who have arrived in the city so far. With 50% of the city’s hotels filled with the homeless and Adams looking to put them up in schools, parks, airport buildings, college dorms, and other facilities, the city is out of room. He’s gone as far as to sue suburban towns and counties for taking measures to block him from shifting the problem to their communities.
Some of the elected leaders hit with the questionnaire viewed it as a patronizing gesture that could alienate key allies. Adams has already identified potential challengers to his reelection and uses the issue to attack them, as evidenced by his frequent admonishments of City Comptroller Brad Lander for not going to Washington to ask for help. The Queens delegation represents middle and working-class black constituents who make up a significant portion of Adams’ voter base. These taxpayers will be among the most affected as the migrants compete for jobs, schooling, and city services.
The officials, which also included state Democrat lawmakers and representatives of Congressman Gregory Meeks, questioned Adam’s about the services he’s providing at shelters amid concerns of loitering, panhandling and women turning to sex work, according to reports from attendees and those briefed on the meeting, who noted that the discussion was tense.
City leaders have increased public pressure on both Biden and Gov. Kathy Hochul for help with the crisis. So far, Hochul has redistributed over a billion in state taxpayer dollars to the city but has said nothing about the open borders or the estimated 2,000 immigrants being shipped to New York each week. Adams, who called a billion-dollar increase in his annual spending plan the “asylum seekers federal shortfall,” said the city will need more than $4 billion over the next two years to support the immigrants.
The plot thickened when the judge overseeing the city’s shelter system asked Adams for a wishlist of his funding needs, signaling that she may order the Hochul administration to provide the monies. Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Erika Edwards oversees the decades-old “Right to Shelter” court settlement that forces New York to provide a bed to anyone who asks for one. In a less-than-veiled reference to Hochul, Adams retorted, “We need all of our partners to step up and treat this crisis like the emergency that it is, instead of abandoning New York City to provide shelter and care for more than 95,000 asylum seekers by ourselves.”
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So far, Biden has only ponied up about $142 million to help the city with the promise of another $100 million, an amount the mayor described as a “drop in the bucket” compared to the billions the city will spend on the crisis.
The mayor was reportedly underwhelmed after a meeting in Washington with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who offered to assign him a point person for migrant issues. In addition to calling for hundreds of millions in aid, Adams is pushing for the feds to step up authorizations so the migrants can legally work in the city.
“We're all calling for it,” he said. “We need a response from Washington, and I have not gotten a yay or nay, and we need it,” the mayor said.
City Councilman Bob Holden (D-Queens) weighed in: “This is so comical, it’s beyond absurd. We don’t need a liaison, we need a plan: What do we do with 90,000-plus migrants who are unvetted and now in New York City?” he wondered. “Biden is asleep at the wheel, has been and continues to be — obviously — not engaged and not trying to solve any of New York’s problems. You want to speed this up, check these people out, see if they deserve to get the status of asylum, and that should be the number one priority.”
The crisis unfolding in New York and cities across America is a direct result of a Democrat policy to change the demographics of the nation by ushering in unskilled economic refugees under the guise of giving them political asylum. Once in the country, their asylum claims won’t be adjudicated for years and in the meantime, the Democrats will push to grant them amnesty and make them permanent citizens. They will require ongoing government services, which the Democrats will be happy to provide using taxpayer money in exchange for their votes.