National
Review Online
Monday,
August 14, 2023
New York
City mayor Eric Adams went on a major media campaign to get the attention
of the Biden administration, hitting morning talk shows and the New York
Times. His
message was simple: There’s a border crisis, and it is swallowing New York
City. “There’s a lot of blame to go around,” he said on a CBS Mornings appearance
when asked if he blamed the Biden administration. “FEMA is using dollars on the
southern border to allow people to bus people to New York City.”
To his
credit, Mayor Adams has tried to prevent migration into New York from
resulting in total public breakdown as seen in the ever-growing tent
encampments that form in California cities. But the bill for housing and
feeding illegal immigrants is totally unsustainable. Adams said the city was on
pace to spend $5 billion this year on issues related to illegal immigration and
asylum seekers. That’s more than the city spends on sanitation, parks, and the
fire department combined.
For
years, Democrats have been drifting toward a policy of neglecting immigration
law and the border for supposedly anti-racist reasons. Democratic
administrations in the White House offer quasi-legal status to illegal
immigrants and expand the application of asylum status to economic immigrants,
while blue-city mayors declare their cities a sanctuary for the “undocumented,”
and the party’s ideologues claim that immigration enforcement is a cover for
white supremacy, with its unjust policing of “non-white bodies.”
The
results of this neglect are perverse. It means a growing class of people who
reside and work in America without the sanction or protection of the law — including
a spike in violations of child-labor laws. It means more growth in human- and
fentanyl-trafficking enterprises operating in Mexico. And it is now lowering
the quality of life in our major cities, to the point that New York City is now
yelping for assistance.
The
first thing Adams demanded from the federal government was more money,
complaining that a national policy issue is costing New York City $12 billion
over three years and the city is in receipt of only $100 million from the feds.
But, significantly, he has demanded that we “stop the flow” of migration at the
border itself — and pursue a “real decompression strategy.” Adams noted that
the lack of enforcement meant that “the dam finally burst,” and now illegal
immigrants weren’t just coming from Latin America to the Mexican border and then
to New York, but from all over the world.
Adams
has gotten one thing wrong in his demands. He has asked the federal government
to loosen the restrictions on the ability of asylum seekers to get jobs in
America. As Adams sees it, many of the immigrants and asylum seekers currently
dependent on the city’s coffers would swiftly move to support themselves if
allowed to do so. He’s wrong. Removing even these lightly enforced boundaries
around the American labor market would be only another magnet driving up immigration
numbers and expanding the pool of laborers who work without the full protection
of the law.
But,
crucially, Adams is speaking to the heart of the immigration issue. It is
fundamentally about the number of immigrants and the legal, social, and economic
resources a society has to integrate them. Adams said the current rate of
immigration to New York City is “not sustainable.” At 10,000 a month, “the math
just does not add up.” He’s right.
The
Biden administration should listen to Adams. Enforcing the law at the border,
and tightening up our asylum procedures, is the right thing to do for our
cities and the right thing to do for potential immigrants and asylum seekers
now. The current policy of neglect about our laws is financially ruinous, and
morally vainglorious. It congratulates itself as humanitarian even as it
exposes more immigrants and asylum seekers to dangerous journeys and
exploitation.
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