Adams says migrant crisis could cost city $12 billion
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Eric Adams gave an address Wednesday morning on the migrant crisis, saying it could cost the city $12 billion by 2025. Photo by Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office
By Ryan Schwach
Mayor Eric Adams upped his administration’s projected cost of the migrant crisis this week, describing a grim and costly future for the city while defending his administration’s efforts to house and provide services to the nearly 100,000 asylum seekers who have arrived in the city in the past year.
During his City Hall address Wednesday morning, Adams said that the migrant crisis could cost the city as much as $12 billion by the end of 2025, and reiterated calls for increased federal assistance.
“Since last year, nearly 100,000 asylum seekers have arrived in our city asking for shelter, and we are past our breaking point,” Adams said. “New York City has been left to pick up the pieces of a broken immigration system — one that is projected to cost our city $12 billion over the course of three fiscal years without policy changes and further support from the state and federal governments. Our compassion may be limitless, but our resources are not.”
Adams said that the $12 billion number is in addition to money that has already been allocated to deal with the crisis, and that it is the “floor, not the ceiling” for how much the crisis could cost the city financially.
His previous estimates have been disputed, including by members of the City Council.
According to the mayor, the city anticipates that more than 100,000 individuals will be in the city’s care, at a cost of just over $6.1 billion by Fiscal yYear 2025.
Adams reiterated calls he, as well as other political allies, have been making for months, urging President Joe Biden and Congress to inject more financial assistance into the city so New Yorkers aren’t picking up the $12 billion check on their own.
“New Yorkers have been left to deal with this crisis almost entirely on our own and has been fueled by those in Congress who stand in the way of real immigration reform, governors who have used vulnerable asylum seekers as political pawns, the indifference of leaders across the nation and let me be clear your city would not abandon our brothers and sisters seeking the American dream,” Adams said.
The mayor, who recently told migrants that they should avoid coming to New York, also repeated calls for a federal declaration of a state of emergency, and an executive order to expedite work authorization for those awaiting a ruling on their asylum claims.
He also spent time defending his administration’s efforts so far in managing the crisis.
“I'm not struggling,” he said. “I'm managing a crisis and anyone who has managed a crisis before, knows that leadership is important.”
“I'm the face of a successful city that successfully is doing what no other city has been able to do at the magnitude that we have been able to do,” he added.
However, he said that after providing shelter, food, health care and other needs to tens of thousands of migrants, the city is at its breaking point.
“Our partners at the state and federal levels know that we continue to face impossible decisions about allocating our resources,” he said. “And that means lose-lose for our most vulnerable New Yorkers, as well as those seeking asylum.”
During his address on Wednesday, he claimed that incidents like those that recently unfolded outside of the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan, where dozens of mostly migrant men were forced to sleep outside awaiting shelter, would become more common if more federal support does not come.
“It breaks this city's heart,” he said.
