Staten Island is often an outlier among New York City’s five boroughs. It is the second largest geographically, but the least populated; it has the second highest median income among the boroughs, but its heavily suburban neighborhoods are disconnected from the city’s subway system and other amenities; where most of the city is awash in Democratic votes, Staten Island is a Republican enclave. For those reasons and more, it is unsurprising that there has been a major increase in anti-immigrant sentiment on the island as New York has seen an uptick in migrant arrivals over the past year.
Rather than providing leadership and support for these vulnerable newcomers, Democratic elected officials are instead either dithering or sounding a lot like Republicans themselves.
That surge and the associated protests would be easy to write off if they were limited to Staten Island or even if they were concentrated in more conservative areas upstate. But instead, we’re seeing similar distrust and dismay with the growing number of migrants in the city and beyond from New York Democrats too. And rather than providing leadership and support for these vulnerable newcomers, Democratic elected officials are instead either dithering or sounding a lot like Republicans themselves.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams provided a chilling example in his comments at a town hall on Wednesday. “Never in my life have I had a problem that I did not see an ending to. I don’t see an ending to this,” he told a crowd at a town hall on the Upper West Side. “I don’t see an ending to this. This issue will destroy New York City.”
Adams, a former Republican, has made similar comments before about the influx of migrants. He’s spent the last year railing against Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s policy of busing migrants from the border to northern, often Democratic-controlled cities. The mayor’s comments on Wednesday were no different on that front — he referred to Abbott as a “madman down in Texas.” But the idea that the newly arrived migrants mean that “city we knew we’re about to lose,” as he put it Wednesday, was a serious escalation of his rhetoric, both in terms of pessimism and xenophobia, and earned him deserved condemnation from the Legal Aid Society and the Coalition for the Homeless.
It’s true that the city’s resources have been stretched in providing shelter and support to more than 100,000 new arrivals, including more than 58,000 asylum seekers. Adams has repeatedly called for increased financial support from New York state and the White House in response, and issued flyers discouraging more migrants from coming to the city. He’s demanded that President Joe Biden should declare a state of emergency to deal with the “crisis” at the border, again repeating Republican talking points. And he’s sharply criticized New York Gov. Kathy Hochul for wanting to limit migrants leaving the city for other parts of the state.
Hochul’s administration last month responded to Adams’ claims that the state government was holding out on him in a blistering 12-page reply. But the governor hasn’t exactly covered herself in glory either. New York Focus reports that since the state launched an emergency program in the state in June, exactly zero migrant families have been resettled as of Aug. 29. And Hochul — who has consistently underperformed electorally — has been reluctant to force other counties in the state to take in migrants for fear of making herself a target of upstate Republicans.
The unfortunate truth is that any action or inaction on this front is going to draw attacks from the GOP.
The back-and-forth has done little to solve the problems facing migrants, thousands of whom face a newly imposed deadline to find replacement shelter after 60 days in city-provided beds. And the lack of solutions has weighed on their respective poll numbers. A recent survey from Siena College Research Institute found that New York voters disapprove of Hochul’s handling of the situation by 51% to 35%; Adams was similarly panned with 47% disapproving of the job he's done to 31% approval.
The White House and Adams are still very much at odds with each other, but the Biden administration has been engaging more with Hochul lately, including promising that September will be a “month of action” to make migrants who are eligible to work better aware of their status. Despite that, one of Hochul and Adams’ biggest asks — extending Temporary Protective Status to many of the arriving migrants to allow even them to begin working sooner — has so far been rejected. Greg Sargent of The Washington Post reported Friday that this could in part be because of fears that approving TPS would draw even more migrants across the border, opening them to political attack.
The unfortunate truth is that any action or inaction on this front is going to draw attacks from the GOP. If it’s not complaints about how many resources are being directed toward migrants, it’s that the government isn’t doing enough to keep them off the streets. What doesn’t help, though, is agreeing with Republicans who say that migrants are inherently destabilizing to the city and state. This is not the time to suddenly make immigration a bipartisan issue again in a way that hurts, rather than helps, people seeking a new life.
