In a letter addressed to President Joe Biden, Gov. Kathy Hochul directly asked for more federal resources to deal with the asylum-seekers crisis in New York, and addressed criticisms of her handling of the matter for the past year. Her requests included expedited work authorizations for asylum-seekers, financial assistance for New York City, and the use of federal land for temporary shelter sites.
“The reality is we’ve managed this far without substantive support from Washington, despite the fact that this is a national and inherently federal issue, but New York has shouldered this burden for far too long,” Hochul said at a press conference.
In the past year, New York City has seen the arrival of more than 100,000 asylum-seekers and migrants. A central issue of their entry process is that many can’t work legally in the U.S. yet, forcing them to seek under-the-table cash jobs or street hustles to get by.
Hochul confirmed that the state has a serious labor shortage in various industries. She said that the state Department of Labor (DOL) can help connect asylum-seekers to gain lawful employment quickly, but they need expedited work visas to do so. She demanded that Biden allow eligible individuals permits to work legally asap. Most local immigration activists in the city and Mayor Eric Adams have been screaming the same demand since the crisis began.
Hochul’s letter said the federal government could speed up such work permits through executive actions, such as granting and extending Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and using the humanitarian parole program for individuals from other countries. She said funds would go to four main areas: healthcare and human services for migrants with illnesses or who have COVID-19, free Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) transportation for asylum-seekers, housing subsidy programs and Section 8 housing vouchers for eligible homeless families and individuals to free up space in city shelters, and school districts seeing dramatic increases in their student populations as a direct result of this crisis.
At Battery Park in Manhattan Aug. 25, a coalition of activist groups at the forefront of the crisis gathered to echo Hochul’s demand that the federal government and Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas expand TPS and work authorizations for asylum-seekers. Groups included Make the Road New York, SEIU 1199, 32BJ SEIU, the NYC Employment & Training Coalition, Mixteca, 86 the Barrier, La Colmena, and Part of the Solution.
“The Biden administration has an obligation to redesignate and expedite TPS applications,” said Murad Awawdeh, executive director of New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC), in a statement. “Federal policy requires asylum-seekers to wait months, sometimes years, to receive work authorization, forcing too many of them into an underground economy of unreliable jobs that are exploitative if not dangerous. Thousands of asylum-seekers want to work so they can work toward cementing themselves into their new communities.”
The groups advocated for countries that meet the TPS statutory requirements, such as Venezuela, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Nepal, Sudan, South Sudan, and Cameroon, as well as Guatemala, Mauritania, Mali, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Senegal, Haiti, and Nigeria.
“We urge the Biden administration to expand Temporary Protected Status and expedite work authorization, so people can start working without subjecting themselves to the abuses of underground workforce labor,” said Lorena Kourousias, executive director of Mixteca, in a statement. “Granting employment authorization to asylum-seekers is pivotal not only to take steps to address the humanitarian crisis but to decrease financial pressure in the city. This is a large group of skilled people ready to contribute to the local economy. It’s not just about giving them the opportunity to work, but taking a significant step to manage overcrowded shelters, prevent abuses, and invest in self-sufficiency.”
Local elected officials also chimed in with a call for more federal aid. “I’m grateful that Governor Hochul is joining New York City’s calls for federal aid, but we still have a lot of work to do at home in New York,” said Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso. “I’m very disappointed to see the governor’s unwillingness to compel jurisdictions outside NYC to do the right thing by housing asylum-seekers.”
Adams and upward of 30 upstate Republican-led counties have been in heated litigation over sharing the burden of housing individuals since May, declaring “states of emergency” blocking Adams’s plan to send asylum-seekers out of the city to those counties. Hochul, in her address, said that New York City has the only right-to-shelter law, and she would not “force” the rest of the state to help house asylum-seekers in other counties.
“The city would provide shelter to anyone who seeks it. This is an agreement that does not apply to the state’s other 57 counties, which is one of the reasons we cannot and will not force other parts of our state to shelter migrants,” said Hochul. “Nor will we ask these migrants to move to other parts of the state against their will.”
Adams said in a statement that he appreciated Hochul’s acknowledgment of the work that the city has done to manage the influx of asylum-seekers and the call for immediate federal action. He reiterated the need for the federal government to allow asylum-seekers to work and emphasized the city’s cost estimates of over $12 billion over three fiscal years if more financial support is not provided.
However, Adams said he was “disappointed” with Hochul’s decision to minimize the counties’ role in responding to the crisis. The response speaks to speculation about underlying tensions between the governor and mayor over the crisis that they have not publicly wanted to display as administrations in the past famously have.
“Whatever differences we all may have about how to handle this crisis, we believe what is crystal-clear is that whatever obligations apply under state law to the City of New York apply with equal force to every county across New York state,” said Adams, “Leaving New York City alone to manage this crisis—and abdicating the state’s responsibility to coordinate a statewide response—is unfair to New York City residents who also didn’t ask to be left almost entirely on their own in the middle of a national crisis.”
Adams said that Biden should also declare a state of emergency to open up more resources for the city, and Hochul should stop state counties from issuing exclusionary emergency orders against asylum-seekers.
Ariama C. Long is a Report for America corps member and writes about politics for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1.