Asylum seekers in NYC say America is nothing like they had imagined: It's 'chaos'
Category: News & Politics
Via: nerm-l • last year • 42 commentsBy: Marquise Francis (National Reporter via Yahoo News)
What seems so amazing about the situation are the small numbers. If 57,300 migrants overwhelms the city then how can New York City hope to deal with a natural disaster?
Let's not fool ourselves that the migrant crisis in NYC is about the number of people. This is all about the money. And there's no accountability for where the money is being spent. According to the provided numbers, NYC is spending about $170 per day for each migrant. That's about $62,000 per year for each migrant. Don't expect us to believe that the migrants are getting much if any of that money. At these prices, housing 57,300 migrants would cost $3.5 billion a year and the migrants won't see that money. Someone, somewhere is exploiting the situation for a hell of a lot of profit.
Mayor Adams only wants the Federal government to step in and make the New York rich richer. Maybe New York is still PO'd about the cap on SALT deductions. But graft ain't the way to address that NYC butt hurt.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
NEW YORK — For one 29-year-old Venezuelan woman, who left her two children and partner behind in her home country to embark on a six-month journey to New York City, America represented hope. There, she thought, she would find safety and the opportunity to make a living. But four months after arriving in the U.S., she says it’s nothing like she had imagined.
“It’s too difficult to come to a place where you don’t know the language,” the woman, who agreed to speak anonymously to protect her safety, told Yahoo News.
Speaking in Spanish, the woman had been standing along the granite wall of a bustling midtown Manhattan restaurant attached to the Roosevelt Hotel, which in recent months has been transformed into the city’s migrant intake center.
Asylum seekers inside the Roosevelt Hotel on July 20. (Brendan McDermid/Reuters)
Like many Venezuelans who’ve come to the U.S. in recent years, the woman explained that Venezuela’s corrupt and repressive government had left her with few options at home. She embarked on the dangerous journey to the U.S. by herself, traveling through the perilous Darién Gap that connects Colombia to Panama, then multiple countries including Nicaragua and Honduras, by foot and public transportation. She stopped for weeks at a time to work only long enough to make enough money for the next leg of her trip. Since arriving in New York, she’s struggled to make money and obtain basic necessities while navigating the city’s shelter system. Eventually, she says, she hopes to bring her family to America, but she’s unsure how she will make that happen.
“I just want a job,” she said. “It is very difficult to get to a place when you have nothing.”
The woman is just one of an estimated 57,300 migrants currently seeking shelter in New York City. The majority of them have been bused in from Texas , a political move by Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to force the federal government to tighten border security. Others have made their way to New York on their own.
Recently arrived migrants outside the Roosevelt Hotel on Aug. 2. (Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images)
For most migrants, the prospect of finding a decent job and safety is enough to justify the arduous, and often dangerous, journey to the United States. But now that they’re here, some say the U.S. is nothing like what they had imagined.
“I thought of New York differently, but now I also see that New York is in chaos,” said a 48-year-old Ecuadorian woman who was also staying at the Roosevelt. The woman, who declined to give her name, told Yahoo News that she, her husband and their 2-year-old child escaped violence in Ecuador, traveling for two months before they eventually reached New York.
“In my country right now they are stealing, they are killing and there is no longer security, just desperation,” she said, rocking her child back and forth in a stroller on the sidewalk. “We come to look for work. When we die, we are not going to take anything with us. But we want at least to have stability to live, at least while living in this world.”
Migrant challenge in NYC
In the first week of August alone, nearly 3,000 migrants entered the city’s shelter system. With up to an estimated 1,000 migrants arriving each day, city officials say it costs about $10 million a day to care for all of them.
Mayor Eric Adams at a rally in support of asylum seekers on Tuesday in New York City. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
New York City Mayor Eric Adams has said that without significant financial assistance from the state and federal government, in addition to policy changes, the city’s migrant issue will soon become a disaster. At a press conference earlier this month, Adams estimated that caring for asylum seekers may cost the city more than $12 billion over three fiscal years.
“The city is running out of money, appropriate space, and personnel” to care for migrant families, the mayor told reporters . Since 2022, he added, nearly 100,000 migrants have arrived in the city. And though thousands have since moved elsewhere, many remain in the city’s care.
“The immigration system in this nation is broken. It has been broken for decades,” Adams said, declaring: “Today, New York City has been left to pick up the pieces.”
Adams and other city officials have vowed to not turn their backs on migrants that need aid, but in recent weeks hundreds of migrants have been photographed sleeping on sidewalks because, the city says, there is nowhere else for them to go.
“No one wants anyone sleeping on the street or being used as a pawn in a political fight, but it’s just plain reality that there’s no more room,” a City Hall adviser told Politico.
A broken system
Immigration advocates say the migrant issue has been years in the making.
“The arrival of asylum seekers exposed how broken the system is and has been for all those New Yorkers who have been stuck for upwards of a year,” Theodore Moore, vice president of policy and programs at the New York Immigration Coalition, told Yahoo News in an email. “There remains a lack of political will to rectify the situation — now and in previous administrations.”
Migrants sleep outside the Roosevelt Hotel on July 31. (Luiz C. Ribeiro for NY Daily News via Getty Images)
Other critics have accused the city of using migrants on the sidewalk as props to get more federal aid even though they have more resources at their disposal.
“There’s no question that the city could provide additional spaces for the folks who are on the sidewalk,” Joshua Goldfein, an attorney for the Legal Aid Society in New York, told the Associated Press.
But the mayor’s office refutes those claims, adding that officials are conducting themselves “with humanity and with compassion.”
‘We are not animals’
The recent influx of migrants to New York City has shone a spotlight on an issue that, for many Americans, is often seen as a distant concept. The Ecuadorian woman who spoke to Yahoo News said she hopes that she and the other migrants can be seen not as a problem for the city, but as people looking for a better life.
“We are not animals, we are humans,” she said. “We just want to be treated the same as we treat others.”
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If Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona received $62,000 per year for each migrant then they could probably eliminate income taxes and maybe sales taxes, too.
No, the migrants are not animals. But in New York the migrants are money on the hoof. Round 'em up, cowboy Adams!
What else do illegal immigrants expect from a virtue signaling corrupt Democrat run bastion of stupidity?
New York was fine so long as illegal immigration was kept solely to southern border states to handle. They even backed the administration's wide open border policies and not providing federal aid to border states handling the financial and logistical burden.
Now they are getting a very small fraction of the illegals entering this country- Democrat Bastion of Stupidity Sanctuary Cities are all crying about how unfair it all is; and demanding federal money.
Fuck all of them.
Winter is coming assholes. You can't have people sleeping on the streets. Take care of the problem you created!
I've been waiting for all of those heartwarming stories of New Yorkers lovingly taking in all of those illegals, giving them a bedroom or two in their apartments, feeding them and giving them spending money for necessities.
For some reason, I haven't seen any of those stories.
Maybe one of the leftists on here can explain why the party of loving, caring inclusion is not taking up the talk they have been spewing for decades.
We have enough problems already but they just keep letting more just come on in
Current migrant crisis lies squarely on the shoulders of the current administration in DC. If Biden and his minions had not opened the border wide and turned on the vacancy sign we would not be having near the numbers invading this country.
WTH does this mean? "Broken" as in the US taxpayers should have been paying more taxes and funding and building subdivisions for everyone in the world who wants to move to the US?
"Broken" as in the leaders of the US government have broken our own immigration laws by now enforcing them?
"Broken" as in allowing millions of border crossers to compete for work with US citizens? Are there really that many unskilled and low-skilled jobs not being filled in the US? Can and should those jobs be filled by people who don't speak and understand English? Where are they going to work that their supervisors and/or customers are all bi-lingual?
Lowering wages. Anyone surprised?
Our broken immigration system is political football that's been going on for decades. Politicians in DC tout immigration problems to get elected, but never seem to get around to doing much of anything about it, leaving it for the next administration to do the same.
Asylum Seekers In NYC Say America Is Nothing Like They Had Imagined: It's 'Chaos'
That's what happens when America brags about how wonderful it is, "a land of opportunity" where "the streets are paved with gold", holds itself out as being the leading nation in the world and has the symbol of a Statue of Liberty that bears a poem by Emma Lazarus that invites the tired, the poor, the homeless, and the oppressed to come to the golden door of America,
What the hell does ANYONE expect these poor misguided people to have thought, when maybe they were better off staying home?
What? Are you saying that Trump was right?....
[Deleted]
Perhaps, there would certainly be work "opportunities"...
I didn't realize that what I said might have been interpreted in that way so I changed my comment.
Thank goodness you were able to change your comment so it won't be misinterpreted...
Thank goodness you post lots of satirical articles on this site to give us a break from the ugliness.
No doubt, you're welcome....
" poem by Emma Lazarus that invites the tired, the poor, the homeless, and the oppressed to come to the golden door of America,"
That outdated poem is a good slogan for a scrapyard or recycling center,
Amazing how many people consider a poem that was used to raise money is somehow US policy.
It is significant, is it not, that the iconic words of the Lazarus poem are on a bronze plaque attached to the Statue of Liberty.
However, I can understand why these days those who are so opposed to the multitudes from the south seeking the great opportunities and benefits in America as promoted to the rest of the world would downplay that greeting.
If it was only intended to raise money, what was the purpose in attaching it to the Statue of Liberty? Take note of my comment 5.2.2.
The Statue of Liberty is located in New York Harbor. When the statue was erected, New York was the gateway into the United States.
Mayor Adams seems to be turning his liberal back on the history of New York. Irony ain't dead, after all.
It was part of a fundraising effort to pay for the base of statue
At one time USA had space for immigrants, all they had to do was go west and displace some Indians.
we have too many homegrown " tired, the poor, the homeless, and the oppressed", that are our own problems. We do not need anymore problems that other countries did not want.
No one is against legal immigration to this country.
We have immigration laws- they are not being enforced. We have borders- they are not being enforced.
If you ask any conservative they don't care if an illegal crosses our border w/o permission; or overstays a VISA and remains in the country; they all need to be deported. We don't care what the country of origin is. So stop trying to make this about race.
You are also ignoring that those that come through New York then, were migrating legally. The bulk of what we are seeing come across at the southern border....not so much.
Adams needs to remember, his city declared itself a sanctuary city, that they welcomed the illegals and would not prosecute them. This was their own declaration. It was obvious that they had no intent of actually doing anything. But, hey, it pacified the left.
Adams is crying that they now have to step up and do something.
What? I made it about race? I thought most of the immigrants at the south border were white.
Thanks for the civil reply.
Ah, you're an American who admits America's troubles. Since the government is so restrictive, perhaps it should send the more than half million homeless (and increasing because of rising high rents and other living costs) to doing the work the immigrants did - pick fruit, work in the farm fields, wash dishes and wait tables in restaurants, etc. that most Americans feel is below them.
But that would not have been done if it were not relevant.
"Ah, you're an American who admits America's troubles" and I feel that those who like pointing out America's troubles should not complain when the same is done to them,
If it were up to me I would turn that statue around to face America and change the brass Plaque to say "These are My People" and put a big neon NO VACANCY sign (like hotels have when they are full) facing out.
Overpopulation is the biggest problem there is. USA is full. We can not take other countries excess population anymore, nor should we be expected by others to do so.
I would rather have our homeless put up in hotels, and have our Hoity Toity politicians concerned about them than foreigners that illegally crossed our border. Strange when our politicians put outsiders above our own people
When James J Hill, who built the Great Northern Railway wanted immigrants to settle beside his railroad and build a traffic base, he sent agents to Europe pick who he wanted, and he helped them come and settle along the Great Northen Railway. He wanted the best he could get not the tired, poor and lazy. This made the Great Northen, now part of BNSF, very profitable.
Except when "the same is done to them" is off topic and meant to taunt.
How did he determine whether or not a person was lazy?
The book did not tell that so maybe he had smart agents doing the selecting
Okay.
Problem is they brought a lot of their own chaos with them by just coming here illegally.
I don't see the difference about their own chaos whichever way they come. Why would how they come make a difference if they have or bring personal chaos?
They bring the chaos of their country of origin. If you lived on the Mexican border like I and others do, you would have a much better perspective. It is a matter of frame of reference really.