The clown show in New York City starring Mayor Eric Adams has been extraordinarily entertaining, with special guest Governor Kathy Hochul, and in a cameo appearance, the Biden Administration, all forming a circular firing squad blaming each other for failed policies on immigration. Credit Dan Henninger in the Wall Street Journal for pointing out this most welcome exercise most often performed to perfection by their Republican counterparts. But with nary a Republican in sight in this deep blue city, the Democrats have nobody else to blame except themselves. Oh, the delicious irony. As has been widely documented, Mayor Eric Adams recently flew into a rant for the ages, supplanting Larry Elder for the left’s hilarious title of being “the black face of white supremacy.” “This issue will destroy New York City”, he railed. “We’re getting 10,000 migrants a month. The city we knew, we’re about to lose.” “We have to feed, clothe, house, educate their children, wash their laundry sheets, give them everything they need, health care. One time, we were just getting Venezuela. Now we’re getting Ecuador. Now we’re getting Russian speaking coming through Mexico. Now we’re getting western Africa.” Poke me and tell me he didn’t just say that. And without a local Republican to blame, he attempted to demonize Texas Governor Greg Abbott by claiming it all “started with a madman down in Texas, decided he wanted to bus people up to New York City.” This hypocrisy came on the heels of Adams in concert with the hopelessly inept Governor Kathy Hochul attempting to spread New York City’s pain by busing migrants to small towns in upstate New York where local Republican leadership had been resistant. They have gone so far as to ignore local leadership, cutting back-room deals with underutilized motels to house migrants while the New York City taxpayer foots the bill to move their problem elsewhere. Interesting that Adams and other northern cities are quick to jump on the sanctuary city bandwagon and trumpet their liberal policies when the border is thousands of miles away, yet when the problem comes knocking at their door, they are equally as quick to adopt a “not in my backyard” mentality. Adams even went so far as to point to the Statue of Liberty, where Emma Lazarus’ 1883 sonnet proclaims; “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”, as representing the American ideal, the New York City invitation for welcoming immigrants into the country……that is until they actually arrived. How about those huddled masses camped out on your streets now, Eric? And to blame Governor Abbott for your immigrant crisis is preposterous. With over 1.6 million migrants pouring into Texas, Governor Abbott bused a paltry $13,300 to New York. Meanwhile, $110,000 have shown up in the Big Apple, ostensible by other means than a Texas chartered bus, punching a $12 million dollar hole in the city’s budget, just after Adams awarded the city uniformed unions a $4 billion 5-year contract. But apparently, this perfect storm was created by New York’s liberal policies and budgetary malfeasance. When they decided to liberate mental health institutions and turn the mentally ill out into the streets with the claim that they could be managed with outpatient care, they put in place a safety net of sorts that allowed the homeless to benefit from guaranteed housing at the city’s expense. Alas, it turned out the mentally ill were content to avoid those outpatient clinics and were free to exercise their mental illness-induced proclivities by living on the streets. The migrants, however, preferred a roof over their heads and three squares a day, finding the perfect policies in place to grant them their golden ticket to life in America. With a government-supplied cell phone, health care, room and board, and unable to become employed due to a mandatory waiting period before a work visa, could be issued they found themselves with a suddenly improved standard of living with a life of leisure on the taxpayer’s dime. Now Adams is scrambling to somehow issue temporary work visas to expedite their path to employment. And exactly what are they qualified to do, Mayor? With the vast majority of the migrants possessing poor language skills and no education, the only available jobs will be unskilled labor, mostly in the service industry. Meanwhile, with work-from-home policies still lingering, vacancies in commercial real estate remain at record highs and foot traffic has been drastically reduced in commercial sectors of the city. Restaurants, hotels, and shops that catered to the commuters have experienced unprecedented hardship and many have failed. Where exactly are these people going to find work? Kathy Hochul has proven inept in responding to Adams’ requests for assistance, pandering to the federal government for aid and going so far as to blame the feds, stating: This crisis originated with the federal government.” So in other words, the border policy by the Biden administration has been an unmitigated disaster. Is that what you’re telling me, Kathy? In yet another moment of hilarity, Homeland Security Secretary Majorkas, he of the “border is closed” party line, retaliated by accusing the state of New York and the city of making “structural” migrant mistakes. Adams has even accused the Biden administration directly by stating, “We need an emergency action down at the border.” Adams even turned on Hochul, criticizing her for not forcing upstate communities to share the burden by taking in migrants, putting the Governor in the peculiar position of having to institute a liberal policy in rural upstate New York where the cities along the thruway, Albany, Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo, remain blue sanctuary city islands surrounded by a sea of deep red rural farmland. And they are all suffering through the inner city decay and crime that is sweeping urban America, poorly positioned to take on a financially devastating migrant burden.
So Republicans sit on the sidelines and gleefully watch the fallout. And where is the mouthy Representative Ocasio-Cortez, recently back from her socialist tour of South America where a high percentage of these migrants originated? So concerned is she with the quality of life in the city, so much so that she submarined an Amazon deal that would have brought high-paying jobs and increased tax revenue to the region, yet she appears unfazed by migrant detritus in the streets and a raging crime wave. Maybe they haven’t migrated into her Brooklyn district yet, and they most certainly are not sleeping in the foyer of her tony Georgetown apartment complex. When they do, perhaps she will get the NIMBY fever that has afflicted her formerly woke sanctuary city proponents. In the meantime, the result, unfortunately, will be disastrous for New York City and the state of New York, only adding to tax increases over and above the exorbitant rates already imposed, a reduced standard of living, and a continued exodus of working-class families. All because of failed policies, partisan posturing and an inability to connect woke ideology with financial reality.
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