New York Governor Kathy Hochul has issued an urgent plea to the White House for billions of dollars in federal aid to help set up housing and work authorizations for tens of thousands of asylum-seekers.
“Governor Kathy Hochul delivered a live-streamed address last week to showcase how she’s handling the state’s migrant crisis. The governor's stepping up her messaging on the controversial issue as her popularity has taken a hit in a recent statewide poll.
Hochul said she wanted to tell New Yorkers directly about what she’s doing to resolve a crisis caused by the influx of over 100,000 asylum-seekers to the state in the past several months.
She said she’s freed up space in state buildings and helped New York City designate over 200 shelters to house migrants, allocated $1 billion in the state budget and deployed over 2,000 National Guard troops to help.
The governor also emphasized that the crisis is not of her making. She put the blame on Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican who has bused the migrants to New York City.
Specifically, Hochul wants a waiver of the six-month waiting period before the asylum-seekers are allowed to seek employment. She said she also wants ‘significant’ funding from the president, and Congress, to reimburse New York’s costs, which she said could rise to $4.5 billion next year. The governor is also seeking help with housing and providing education for migrant children, and money to test the newcomers for potential transmissible illnesses like tuberculosis and get them COVID-19 vaccines and other shots.
Hochul did not cover any new ground in her speech. She’s told reporters for months now that she’s been speaking to the White House on a daily basis, asking for the work waivers and the financial assistance.
But her efforts have so far been largely unsuccessful.
Last week, a Siena College poll found that Hochul’s favorability rating is the lowest it’s been during her two-year tenure as governor. Siena pollster Steve Greenberg said that New Yorkers of all political viewpoints, including most Democrats, believe the influx of migrants to the state is a ‘serious problem’.
‘Certainly her handling of the migrant issue does not help her numbers’, Greenberg said.
The governor also rallied many of the state’s congressional and local elected officials to support her stance. Her aides sent out a news release highlighting comments from them and organizations like the state’s restaurant association and groups that work with refugees.
Noticeably absent was New York City Mayor Eric Adams. The governor and mayor, who have been allies on many issues, have seen their relationship fray over the migrant crisis.
Two major advocacy groups that did not sign on are the state’s Legal Aid Society and the Coalition for the Homeless.
Both groups have filed a lawsuit trying to expand New York City’s right-to-shelter policy to the rest of the state, arguing that the state’s constitution requires it. Hochul disagrees and is opposing them in court.
Josh Goldfein, staff attorney for Legal Aid, said even though the governor did not announce any major new policies, he credits Hochul for focusing greater attention on the migrant crisis and putting more pressure on the president and Congress to take more responsibility.
‘I think there is a sense that the bigger-picture message needs to be stronger and that the governor is trying to raise the profile of the issue’, Goldfein said. ‘Maybe she doesn't need to say something different than what she said. She just needs to say it in a different way to get people's attention’.
The Legal Aid Society and the Coalition for the Homeless, along with several other groups, wrote a letter to Hochul urging her to do more to settle the migrants in regions outside of New York. Goldfein said the governor could use her executive powers to override local emergency orders banning the asylum-seekers.
‘What we need is for the governor to really take ownership of some of these issues and show some leadership to help people relocate to the communities that need, you know, an influx of people, and that would welcome new arrivals’.
In her speech, Hochul said she won’t ‘force’ other parts of the state to shelter migrants. The busing of migrants to regions in the Hudson Valley and the Albany, Rochester and Buffalo areas has been politically unpopular”. -Karen DeWitt, New York State Capital Correspondent
Immigration is a working-class issue. While an increase in the supply of labor with no expansion of demand may be advantageous for corporations, immigration, whether legal or illegal, is a major contributing factor as to why a growing number of Americans are now unemployed and economically vulnerable while corporate profits, by contrast, continue to climb.
The irony, however, of portraying the influx of immigrants into the state as being unfavorable for Hochul in the polls is that implementing restrictive immigration policies would only be of benefit to Hochul’s poll numbers in the short term while pursuing her legislative agenda of expanding her voter base by permanently altering America’s demographics through mass migration is Hochul’s clear underlying modus operandi as immigrant populations tend to prioritize more immigration above all else.