In a move that epitomizes the “America Last” ethos, Mayor Eric Adams’ administration has initiated a controversial $53 million pilot program, purportedly designed to assist illegal immigrant families in New York City, the New York Post reported.
As part of this initiative, the city intends to provide pre-paid credit cards to illegal immigrant families housed in upscale hotels such as the Roosevelt Hotel. Managed by the New Jersey-based Mobility Capital Finance (MoCaFi), it is designed to replace existing food services, granting migrants the freedom to purchase their groceries and baby supplies.
The amount loaded onto the cards will vary based on family size and income, with a four-person household potentially receiving up to $1,000 a month, or $35 daily. These cards will be reloaded every 28 days.
Initially targeting a pilot group of 500 individuals, the city plans to potentially extend this offering to accommodate the entire number of illegal aliens staying in the hotels, which is approximately 15,000.
“Not only will this provide families with the ability to purchase fresh food for their culturally relevant diets and the baby supplies of their choosing, but the pilot program is expected to save New York City more than $600,000 per month, or more than $7.2 million annually,” Adams spokesperson Kayla Mamelak said.
New York Post reported:
The city has been shelling out about $11 per meal to feed migrant families in hotels, something that’s long posed a problem as some asylum seekers from various countries in Central and South America, Africa and Europe may be looking for a taste of home.
Just last month, the controversial company DocGo was found to be wasting thousands of dollars on uneaten meals.
Migrants confessed to The Post in the days after that they would rather cook in their hotel rooms because the provided meals were so “bad.”
News of the pre-paid card program comes a day after The Post revealed another $137 million in contracts with city hotels to provide more than 750 rooms to asylum seekers with families.
The city is housing just over 66,000 asylum seekers after 1,500 more arrived last week as part of a crisis that is expected to cost $10 billion through 2025.
The program raises significant ethical and financial questions. It draws an uncomfortable parallel with the state’s food stamp program, SNAP, yet with a glaring difference: it exclusively benefits illegal immigrants over the city’s own struggling residents.
The decision to allocate such a substantial sum towards this program is particularly galling when considering the myriad challenges facing New York City’s legal residents.
From homelessness and housing shortages to underfunded public schools and crumbling infrastructure, the needs of New Yorkers seem to have been sidelined.
Last November, Eric Adams on Thursday announced new budget cuts due to the financial strain the hordes of illegal aliens are causing the City.
The illegals are taking over New York City, and now the City is slashing the NYPD force and reducing money allocated toward education.
“For months, we have warned New Yorkers about the challenging fiscal situation our city faces,” said Mayor Adams. “To balance the budget as the law requires, every city agency dug into their own budget to find savings, with minimal disruption to services. And while we pulled it off this time, make no mistake: Migrant costs are going up, tax revenue growth is slowing, and COVID stimulus funding is drying up. No city should be left to handle a national humanitarian crisis largely on its own, and without the significant and timely support we need from Washington, D.C., today’s budget will be only the beginning.”
Eric Adams went to Washington, DC, for the 10th time to plead for help from Biden but admitted, “help is not on its way.”
“I did not leave with optimism,” Adams said to reporters last December.
“I left with the cold reality that help is not on the way in the immediate future. It is going to be, at this moment, it’s going to be up to New Yorkers and this administration to continue to navigate this challenge that we’re facing.”
In the past, he slammed Biden’s border policy indirectly by claiming that the migrant crisis is ‘destroying’ the city.
After his most recent fruitless plea for help, Adams once again hinted that the blame should lay at Joe Biden’s feet.
This story originally appeared on TheGateWayPundit
