New York’s illegal migrants want to stay right here.
In the latest grim news from the front lines of the crisis, the vast majority of migrants taken into the city’s overtaxed shelter system are simply staying put once their first 30 days are up, with less than 2% of adult migrants saying “yes” to a taxpayer-funded ticket elsewhere (based on numbers from the city’s East Village shelter re-entry center).
In other words, the city’s longtime policy of handing out travel tickets in hopes that people can find a better situation elsewhere is having close to zero effect.
J. Messerschmidt for NY Post
Yes, every little bit helps: Even that under-2% means a fractional easing of the massive pressure exerted by the 175,000-plus arrivals, a tsunami set to cost the city $10 billion through the next fiscal year.
But the fact that more than 98% of migrants aren’t taking the offer of a free ride to move on reveals that free bus or plane tickets were only ever a way to manage the crisis — and in this case, to barely do that.
It’s yet more evidence that this is a national crisis; local and even state solutions, no matter how generous, can’t deal with the mainspring of the problem.
Plus, New York’s generosity toward these arrivals borders on the pathological, thanks to the open-border progressives who hold massive sway in city government (which no doubt partly explains the eagerness to stay, along with our plentiful gray-market job opportunities in app deliveries and the like).
No: As long as President Biden pursues his policy of refusing to keep our border secure, illegal immigrants will continue to flood across and on into the interior.
The budgets of major cities as far from the border as New York will be strained to the utmost.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
