In a surprise move, New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) announced this weekend that he was ordering city agencies to cut their budgets by 5% in response to the current migrant crisis. The Big Apple has received more than 100,000 migrants since last year and is struggling to handle the situation.
Adams said that since the significant increase in migrant arrivals last year, “we have warned New Yorkers that every city service could be impacted by this crisis if we did not get the support we needed.”
The mayor said that New York has had to handle the “costs of a national crisis” and that the city is running out of emergency pandemic funding. Adams also argued that the city’s tax revenue is declining.
Without action “our city’s financial future may be at risk,” he said.
The cost of migrant care may be $12 billion over the next three years.
New York has attempted to house the migrants in multiple ways and sent some out of the city to surrounding communities.
At first, New York City Mayor Eric Adams was a hotel concierge for illegal immigrants. Now, 110,000 migrants later, Eric Adams is begging for mercy. New York City has become unrecognizable with migrants lining the sidewalks and camping outside five-star hotels.
Nothing has been… pic.twitter.com/blQ1aSZPIv
— Jesse Watters (@JesseBWatters) September 8, 2023
The resettlement of the New York City migrants to other counties in the state came after Adams criticized Republican officials who bussed migrants northward, including Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R).
In May, the mayor called the Texas governor’s decision “morally bankrupt” and said that the decision was “devoid of any concern for the well-being of asylum seekers, but it is also impossible to ignore the fact that Abbott is now targeting five cities run by Black mayors. Put plainly, Abbott is using this crisis to hurt Black-run cities.”
Adams also argued that Texas sent the migrants “against their will” and described them as ‘hostages.’
“Despite Abbott’s inhumane actions, New York City will continue to do all it can to handle this influx, but this crisis is more than one city can handle,” Adams said at the time. “With a vacuum of leadership from border states, we need the federal government to step in and provide us with support and to prevent this cruelty from continuing.”