Two cheers for sanity!
Mayor Adams announced Monday that the Roosevelt Hotel will cease being a migrant welcome center and shelter in a couple of months, as the city slowly unwinds what he called a “unprecedented international humanitarian effort.”
Credit of course goes to President Trump’s quick reversal of Joe Biden’s open border policies, which has slowed the flow from the southern border to a trickle.
Roughly 200 migrants showed up in New York City in the first week of February, compared to 1,500 a week last year at this time.
So why not three cheers?
Because even if we’re dealing with fewer migrants, Adams still steers them to taxpayer-funded shelters.
This is, and always has been, a perverse reading of the city’s “right to shelter.” That “right” is a negotiated legal settlement, not a law, and it was intended to aid New Yorkers who found themselves homeless.
It wasn’t supposed to be an invitation to the world: Stay in a Gotham hotel on our dime. Given that offer, of course migrants would rush to New York City.
The mayor’s policy continues to make the city a magnet for border crossers. It’s just that the feds are finally enforcing immigration law — saving Adams from himself.
Local taxpayers have already shelled out $5 billion for this folly. The feds have refused to help — even clawing back a pittance, $80 million, that the mayor was promised. But they’re right. No one forced Adams to do any of this.
But where will these migrant families go, the progressive caucus thunders.
Where migrants have always gone!
Immigrants have been arriving in New York for 400 years, and they always find a place to live, in tenement apartments and row houses. They struggle, they scrape, and they build a better life.
Consider that Adams already put a 30-day shelter limit on single men and a 60-day limit on families. Scores of migrants have already been released, forced to find their own way, and they did. That’s how it is meant to work.
Which is why as Adams clears out migrant shelters, he needs to stop accepting new entrants. The national strategy has changed, so must the local one. Migrants will still come here. But they will make it here as migrants always have.
