Yves here. The “pushes them to leave” part in the headline is no exaggeration. This story reports that as New York City is denying migrants shelter, it is also offering them tickets to anywhere in the world. This is what the Biden open borders with no thought as to what comes next hath wrought: people coming to the US (admittedly many misled by coyotes they paid to smuggle them in) and then finding the whole premise of their struggle to get here to be false.
Admittedly, there are new immigrants who have family or close contacts who can house them at least for a while and assist with finding employment. Due to the characteristic failure of this Administration to track anything, we have no clue as to how many of these arrivals have an adequate prospect at making a successful go.
By Gwynne Hogan. Originally published at THE CITY on October 24, 2023
Migrants lay on the floor of an Astoria Church after being turned away from an East Village shelter. Credit: Obtained by THE CITY
Migrants are experiencing a new level of confusion and hopelessness this week as city officials make a renewed push to get them out of shelters and the city altogether.
Migrants who’d been evicted from their shelters and told to reapply were directed to a site in the East Village that turned out to be a “reticketing center” the city opened over the weekend offering plane fares to anywhere in the world. Those who declined were turned away, with some sent on Monday to a “waiting room” an hour away.
But by Tuesday that option had disappeared as well and new arrivals were simply told there was nothing else for them, and nowhere in particular for them to go, if they didn’t want a ticket.
“We’re in the street,” said Carlos Gutéirrez, out front of the reticketing center with all his belongings, deciding what to do next. His Midtown shelter had been vacated by the Fire Department on Monday and he’d been sent to the “welcome center” at the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown. Hours later, he was told to go from there to a site in Astoria, which was packed with people, so he was told to return to the Roosevelt. On Tuesday morning, workers there sent him to the East Village, where he was again turned away.
“They’re treating us like children, sending from here to there, from there to here,” he said in Spanish. “The only thing that occurs to me is to leave New York City, but where are we going to go?”
City Hall confirmed the new set up on Tuesday, telling THE CITY men leaving shelters and seeking another placement are guaranteed plane tickets to anywhere in the world and were being sent to the newly opened East Village site to get those tickets. They were not, however, guaranteed a cot to sleep on, according to Kayla Mamelak, a spokesperson for City Hall.
“With no sign of a decompression strategy in the near future, we have established a reticketing center for migrants,” Mamelak said — though none of the migrants THE CITY spoke with in the East Village understood they were being sent to a reticketing site in the first place. “Here, the city will redouble efforts to purchase tickets for migrants to help them take the next steps in their journeys, and it helps us triage operations at The Roosevelt for new arrivals.”
Throughout the day Monday, a stream of men arrived throughout from shelters all across the city, lugging suitcases and duffle bags having been told that the East Village location was where they should reapply for shelter. They could not.
“They told me here they would help me with a shelter. I got here and it’s a lie,” said Franklin Sosa, 21, in Spanish, who’d been sent to the East Village from his former shelter on Randall’s Island after hitting his 60-day time limit that the city began giving adult migrants, which was later shortened to 30 days, before they have to leave and reapply for shelter. “They’re giving out bad information. It’s hard to talk because I’ll cry.”
Within minutes of each man arriving, he was turned away, handed a printed-out packet including a Bing map with the address of a Catholic church in Astoria, Queens.
Men who made the trip from the East Village to Astoria spent the night at St. Margaret Mary, which had been used as a shelter for migrants over the summer. Some of them were handed Mylar rescue blankets for warmth, and photos shared with THE CITY show men laying on the ground.
“They say they don’t know how long we can stay here,” said a 38-year-old from Burkina Faso, who asked that his name be withheld fearing retaliation. “They haven’t told us anything.”
But even the option of sleeping on the floor in a church was no longer available to men arriving in the East Village by Tuesday afternoon.
Signs stuck to the door, translated to Spanish, French, Arabic, and Russian, were how he learned that “THIS IS NOT A RESPITE SITE/SHELTER. THERE ARE NO BEDS AT THIS SITE. WE ARE HERE TO HELP YOU GET TO TRANSPORTATION TO ANY STATE, OR COUNTRY OF YOUR CONVENIENCE.”
‘People Will Be Sleeping in the Streets’
Workers at other migrant shelters started handing out little slips of paper with the East Village site address on Monday, telling men to go there instead of the Roosevelt Hotel, which until this week had been the city’s main intake center for all newly arriving and returning migrants.
But within minutes of their arrival, the migrants learned one by one, they would not get any help there if they intended on staying in New York City.
“They can’t give us beds because there’s no beds [and] there are 4,000 people waiting for beds. What they can help us with is with a ticket elsewhere,” a 29-year-old Venezuelan migrant, who declined to share his full name, said he was told Tuesday afternoon at the reticketing site. He and two friends decided to head to the Roosevelt to try their luck there.
“We are moving people to reticketing to see if they want to be reticketed,” said Deputy Mayor Anne Williams-Isom at a press briefing Tuesday. “If they can’t be reticketed, we put them in a space where they could wait for availability” in a shelter.
That approach appears to violate the city’s right-to-shelter provisions, enshrined in a decades-old consent decree that the Adams administration is currently asking a State Supreme Court judge to suspend parts of — even as it’s already putting a time limit on how long migrants can stay in shelters and planning to send newly arrived families to a tent in southern Brooklyn.
Adams bristled at a mention of those legal obligations at Tuesday’s press briefing.
“There’s two schools of thought in the city right now,” he said. “One school of thought states you can come from anywhere on the globe and come to New York and we are responsible, on taxpayers limited resources, to take care of you for as long as you want: Food, shelter, clothing, washing your sheets, everything, medical care, psychological care for as long as you want. And it’s on New York City taxpayer’s dime. And there’s another school of thought, that we disagree.”
“That’s what you’re seeing playing out in the court right now. We just disagree,” he said, adding that it wasn’t a question of if migrants would be sleeping on the streets, but when.
Adams also said top administration officials were working to identify large outdoor spaces to send people who are turned away from indoor shelters.
‘Bouncing Around All Day’
Compounding the capacity issues as a record nearly 120,000 people, including 64,000 migrants, are now staying in city shelters with 4,000 more arriving each week, the FDNY began vacating shelters for fire-code violations last week — removing hundreds of beds and cots that migrants had been sleeping on in the process.
The FDNY emptied another shelter on Monday at the site of a vacant Touro University building in Midtown that had housed hundreds of men, the same site where Adams’ top advisor Tim Pearson had fought shelter guards last week. A vacate order posted on the door cited a lack of a “required fire alarm system,” which created “a condition imminently perilous to life and property.”
Several men arriving in the East Village who spoke with THE CITY said they’d been kicked out of Touro Monday ahead of their 30-day eviction letters, because of the vacate order, and told to seek a new cot at the East Village location only to be sent to Astoria from there.
Josh Goldfein, an attorney with Legal Aid as it’s in court fighting to maintain the right to shelter, said they’d encouraged the city to find another place to handle intake to avoid a repeat of what happened in the summer months when people slept outside the “welcome center” at the Roosevelt for a week straight.
“The city should have an orderly process that conveys to people in their preferred language where they’re supposed to go and what they’re supposed to do,” he said, adding that Monday’s confusion fell far short of that.
‘I Don’t Know Where To Go’
“This is a psychological exhaustion. You get discouraged. You lose your resolve,” said 40-year-old Alexander, who declined to give his last name and who’d lugged a hefty rolling suitcase and duffle bag on an hour-long trip from the shelter he’d been staying at on Randall’s Island to the East Village location.
Alexander, had spent his first weeks in New York City at a shelter in Bushwick, where for weeks he had no access to showers and had to try to clean himself in the sinks.
“It was chaotic there,” he said.
From there he was sent to Randall’s Island, where he spent the rest of his 60 days before being required to reapply. He said his latest shuffle, while carrying all of his belongings on public transit for hours across the city, felt like a deliberate attempt to get him to give up on New York.
“Imagine you’re in a land where you don’t know anyone, a language that’s not yours. No one understands you. Now what do I do, how do I defend myself?” Alexander said.
As the sun set Monday evening and the fall chill set in, he debated his next move.
“Here there are no jobs. I’ve been looking for a while. This is one of the most expensive cities in the world,” he said. “There are thousands of people waiting for lodging. How long will I wait?”
After about 30 minutes, he made up his mind. He’d take a plane ticket, and try his chances in Utah.
“They say it’s better, because there aren’t as many migrants,” he said.
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Is there any benefit to having an open border and sanctuary cities? I remember seeing much praise about this earlier before in the mainstream media
Cheaper labor?
I forgot that was one of the selling points. Something along the lines of “they do the jobs Americans don’t want to do”?
At the wages offered. The part of that statement that is always conveniently ignored.
Wage suppression and rent extraction.
“If you don’t believe in free and open borders you are RACIST!”
— most Dems, including Border Czar Kamala, ~2000
Does that sound familiar?
Virtue signaling.
“Love Me, I’m a Liberal!” is most apropos, just as liberals at times affect a touching sympathy for The People, The Working Class, etc., as long as the proles keep their distance.
We don’t have anything like an open border, we have a legal and moral obligation to process asylum applications, which takes significant staff and some kind of housing while the processing takes place.
At least some of those people really are not safe in their home countries.
Of course, it doesn’t help that activists have spent years blurring the distinction between refugees and economic migrants and not advocating much for a system to process asylum applications quickly.
The level of ignorance about “sanctuary cities” in the comments is shocking.
“Sanctuary city” just means that people can call 911 without fear of ICE being immediately involved (of course, if it goes to trial, ICE can involve itself, and there have been numerous instances of officials in sanctuary cities violating policy and involving ICE).
That’s it. It does not mean that ICE cannot operate all all, much less that they are offering shelter.
Seriously, do you want a significant proportion of the population afraid to call the police? Do you think that will make immigrants less or more likely to be exploited by employers and landlords?
Anyone else find the timing of this to be strange?
We’re fighting inflation by trying to stop rising wages. And all of a sudden a flood of migrants show up willing to be wage slaves over sleeping on the streets.
Seems like a way to stop everyone at Wendy’s from asking for a raise.
The only thing I find odd about this timing is how long it has taken people to notice what a disaster the migrant situation has been. People like DeSantis were not being kind when they started shuttling illegal immigrants to various locations but it took something that outrageous to bring attention to the problem.
We are not raising interest rates to fight inflation. We’re raising interest rates to cause enough pain that people who are choosing not to work in the traditional sense are forced back into the system. We’re not having problems with child labor and abusing migrants because wages are too high. We have those issues because there aren’t enough workers.
That’s what many are noticing. The fact that mastercard is literally paying for these peoples expenses as they make their way to the US, along with an open society spinoff partnering with mastercard tells me there was a bipartisan project to take care of the “no one wants to work” problem.
Get them to texas, texas ships them north, nyc pays to distribute them here and there. whether taxpayers want to or not
Perhaps this sounds a bit narky but in a way, these emigrants are achieving a measure of success. They are now being treated just like ordinary Americans. Ordinary homeless Americans that is – and all that entails. They are even being encouraged to shift States like is done with lots of homeless Americans. Coming to a homeless tent camp near you. Repubs claim that their importation is part of a plan but I would differ. What we are seeing is actually the absence of a plan and last I heard, Kamala Harris had charge of this problem.
After living 30 years in a sanctuary city where drug addicts were encouraged by the city to migrate there and live under the highways, with zero support and zero plans for support beyond forcing them to panhandle, it’s refreshing to see a city government take appropriate action against the democrat party’s open borders nonsense. Of course it’s terrible for the people being bussed to NY, but why is it that NY should bear the cost of our nation’s open borders problem themselves? It’s just like expecting one city in a large state to bear the costs of the national homeless problem. Local tax payers don’t have the resources to make any difference. But the more their local governments try to fix a national problem at the city level, the more everyone suffers. If the mayor of the city I had to leave for one reason, drug addicts, and the activists that brought them to town, bullying and terrorizing everyone who doesn’t agree with their radical policies, actually took steps to send the people in my former hometown back to the cities they came from, I would jump and cheer. And I completely support border towns bussing people to the places where the voters are that support open borders. Those cities need to feel the pain too. And once they do, you will see places like NY take reasonable actions to stop it, or you will see all the other blue sanctuary cities turn into hellholes, if they haven’t already. The democrat party should continue to loose if they continue with this nonsense.
why is it that NY should bear the cost of our nation’s open borders problem themselves?
Thats some high comedy there. The cost of open borders have been charged to the working class for my entire adult life, and shipping them to blue cities is a recent reactive development that may be working. Rev is right, welcome to america.
Not sure if mine is an official sanctuary city or not, but the liberal goodthinkers have advocated for it to be one, it is rapidly turning into a hellhole, and we are definitely feeling the pain.
More homeless than we can handle already, cheap hotels filled with some homeless and a lot of asylum seekers, with hardly any available housing left for anybody. Every day the tent cities get visibly larger.
Meanwhile, the little 1200 sqft crapbox on a small lot that regularly floods across the street from me is currently on sale for $775,000.00. It was built just a few years ago for $170,000.00 according to the public records. The previous owners didn’t actually live there and I’d see a car in the driveway maybe once or twice a month – clearly a 2nd home for them.
When you need to be at least a millionaire to afford even a tiny house, it’s not hard to figure out why we’re in the mess we’re in almost everywhere these days.
The right plan is to close the border. We don’t need those people here and for all I care if they feel so bad by American hospitality they can go back to where they came from. We owe them absolutely nothing.
I disagree, the majority of the people showing up at the border are fleeing economic ruin due to brutal and short sighted U.S. foreign policies that have made life in their home countries extremely tenuous. We can’t expect to destroy the ability of people to feed their families, then expect them to sit tight and do nothing. The chickens are coming home to roost.
Indeed. I would love to see more of the people who are currently decrying this wretched situation also calling for an immediate and permanent end to destabilizing wars and economic sanctions sponsored by the US. Almost never happens though.
And how much say did the average voter have in that US foreign policy? Unless you were a swing state voter in a few key years, basically zero. And even then you had to pierce the veil of finely tuned psychological operations to even know who was advocating what and for what reason
I knew this would happen. I am so sick of Democrats blathering on about anything at this point. All they have is lip service. “Sanctuary cities” my backside!
It needs to be recalled that the “Sanctuary Cities” effort started in the 1980’s as a way to prevent deportation of people dislocated by US-funded death squads and civil wars in El Salvador, Nicaragua and Honduras. It was not intended to be a morally vain way to distinguish yourself from Orange Man and the Repugs (while maintaining many of the same features) or to lower wages for the working poor, into which it has evolved.
That’s exactly it. Today’s contingent of Democrats is about virtue signaling and moral posturing when it is time to talk, but when it comes time to act all of that goes out the window and they do the same things Republicans do or that they accused Republicans of doing. It’s tiresome, and I am done voting for them.
Wow, I knew Adams was incompetent but this is beyond that. It is brutal, sadistic and incredibly shortsighted. I also have to wonder how deep the state and federal Democratic Party have their mitts in this.
If it is not at all, the Adams administration will be hit with legal rulings requiring him to provide shelter. If those don’t appear, he is the face but this is the new state policy that is the result of the national representatives saying it’s your problem. That this is on the heels of a significant cold snap that is getting a respite for a couple of days but will be back by the weekend is probably no mistake. The migrants are now just more homeless.
And that is sure to end badly.
(I probably would have chosen Santa Barbara. I mean Oprah would be sure to help. Right!?!)
“Here’s your free ticket. I can fill in Gaza or Ukraine as your destination. Which one do you want?”
More likely – “Here’s your ticket and your IDF or Ukrainian Army uniform. God Bless.”
Orrrr – stay with me here – tell them that as there is a shortage of volunteers for the US military, that if they sign up for a five year term (with at least one overseas deployment), that they will receive automatic American citizenship and can work legally anywhere in America afterwards. Heard of the French Foreign Legion? This would be the American Emigrant Legion. Remember –
‘Service guarantees citizenship.’
With no VA for life and all the benefits the military caste has then I think it’s a great idea. It’s been used in the past, as far as I know. But as you know they need a modicum of IQ level, English and physical abilities to be able to serve. We don’t have full battalions of only Spanish speakers lol.
Sorry, but anyone who takes on fighting in a military that is increasingly making Dr Strangelove look like a documentary deserves medical care if they survive. The country reneges on enough other promises, let them have citizenship and healthcare if they make such a Faustian bargain.
For the record I will still be advocating for full single payer healthcare for everyone anyway. If we get that we can forget the VA care
The first ‘U.S.’ casualty in the second invasion of Iraq was Lance Corporal José Antonio Gutierrez, a 24 year old Guatemalan orphan who came to the U.S., illegally, at 14. After high school, the foster parent program he was enlisted in ended, and the Marines offered him citizenship, and paid-for education. He was killed by ‘friendly fire’ at Umm Qasr in March 03.
Matt Kennard of the FT wrote a chapter on this in his book ‘Irregular Army’, which I recommend to one and all.
This actually has been a thing for some time.
I know a Ukrainian from Galicia who volunteered in order to secure citizenship for himself and green cards for his family. He served his hitch and for some reason is in no particular rush to head back.
I’ll speak on behalf of San Francisco and propose a trade with NYC.
Straight up – we will take 2 of your well-meaning migrants in exchange for every 1 of our “unhoused” Fentanyl, Heroin, Meth, and/or Tranq addicts. Then you’ll have room to house half the number you have now. We’ll figure it out on our end, no problem. Deal?
No? Freakin’ whiners….
I knew a long time detective on Santa Monica PD and he related that the city sent a recalcitrant drunk as far away as they could-to Miami, and Miami got wind of it and a problem prostitute from Flagler Street went on a 1-way ticket to Santa Monica.
And then a truce was made, this was in the 70’s.
But now that Abbot has seen your offer, you might get a few buses. He just won’t take your addicts. Gotta figure he wants a few people sleeping on Diane’s grave and waiting for a spot on Nancy’s…
We are getting the woke, upper caste Californians anyway, and their real estate inflation. It’s worse than an infestation of roaches.
Wow, besides the lack of any human decency in some of the remarks – Sorry it’s just my discouraged thoughts about the state of our democracy and the ” We the People” thing. Beside that, we get all the old and new canards being tossed around and of course ‘it’s the other party’s fault or the other vice president or president who is to blame’
It of course can’t be all the neoliberal economic policies and taxes that benefit the FIRE sector and destroy the real economy most of us participate in. And as far as I remember – it the House and Senate that have been working in Bipartisan fashion all these years that have resulted in the disasters we have been seeing evolve and develop over the decades – so maybe one ought to look at who – for the most part, are spending the billions to get these political whores…sorry….bought politicians into office and have positioned media outlets to report sensationalism to make a buck. – Don’t get me wrong, I am for freedom of press and speech no matter how full of crap and politically skewed it may be but, just because of that freedom I will speak out against the vitriol and assume we the people will (given the facts) elect folks who will get the money and legal bribery out of politics and elect people to do the peoples work and not just work for the Fire sector.
My apologies to this site
If the people had any real say in elections, would our election choices come down to a Biden and Trump rematch? I doubt it is what the people want, but it is what the people are going to get.
Tom – You don’t need to apologize. Similar thoughts were in my head.
Godzone has interesting dynamics in terms of makeup of communities, its 91% Caucasian here, while its 88% Hispanic (almost entirely Mexican-American) the next town over in Woodlake, with Ag being dominant and nearly the entire population being involved in some capacity, with a catch though.
The average age of a field worker in the Central Valley is 45, its punishing work with Tule Fog clinging low to the ground chilling you to the bone in the winter and the 100 days of 100 degrees in the summer as a warm up.
That said, i’m not really seeing any new migrants in my neck of the woods, and not being from Mexico-they’d be an odd fit on the farm around these parts.
CA is similar to eastern WA in that way – there are some small towns in agricultural areas that are almost entirely Hispanic. In western WA, although not concentrated in small towns there are also many Hispanics in Puget Sound farm country, although you wouldn’t have much awareness of that if you lived in Seattle proper. In late summer harvest time we see people working in the fields, it is back-breaking labor to stoop down all day harvesting or weeding. The upside (for us) is that there are some excellent Taquerias and Carnecerias in the area.
What percentage of these migrants in NYC are going to have the proper state-issued identification to get past TSA checkpoints at the airport? Let alone immigration checkpoints if they choose fly to an international destination. Will the state of New York pressure the TSA to make a special allowance for these exiting migrants? And what kind of security issues would this create? What if the migrants who successfully get past TSA screening decide that staying in the airport is better than going to Utah? It is warm and safe in the terminal, with ample access to public restrooms. No food or jobs, but wasn’t that what they were getting from shelters anyway when they were allowed to operate?
Seriously, it feels like no one has thought through any of the implications of this policy
It is the Adams administration. Despite being an ex-cop, or maybe because of it, laws many times are fungible to him.
I’m old enough to remember when I wasn’t allowed to enter or leave the USA without a vax certificate. Many other people will recall the same. Perhaps that explains a wee bit of the anger and sense of betrayal or at least blatant hypocrisy by the Biden administration.
Just imagine those who weren’t able to see dying loved ones or newborn kids or whomever only to see millions crossing the border with zero checks whatsoever.
Not that long ago, in the late 1980s, I sponsored a young woman from Colombia. She had to return to her home country and have dental work done in addition to all the vaccinations. Now, she is a citizen and married, had a long career and owns her home.
At the height of that BS I was refused entry into a Seattle restaurant because I forgot to bring proof of vax with me. From the point of view of population control that exercise worked very well.
…In This House …
…somewhere in my basement is a 50 year old copy of the Alistair Cooke’s America book, corresponding to the PBS tv series of the same name. One page has a picture of the med exams at Ellis Island.
“…it feels like no one has thought through any of the implications of this policy.”
I believe you have centered on the crux of this matter. Unfortunately I fear your statement applies to most/all of what passes for policy in the u.s. — with due allowance made for the carefully crafted amendment addenda to u.s. law conferring special favors to u.s. Corporations and to the wealthy.
Further thoughts …
This country needs a well thought out policy for immigration. The u.s. could pick and choose immigrants — the young, the strong, the well-educated, the motivated, and place them where most needed and where they can best prosper. They would revitalize this country and strengthen our blood. But this would require us to adapt and assimilate with them. It would require us to realize the great threats the future world holds and work to prepare this country as a refuge for the best of Humankind we can bring to our shores. Great work is needed to preserve Society and fashion a better form of Civilization for the future.
we have a handful of tents outside every police station, here in Chicago
Robert Fisk used to comment on his amazement at the restraint of the Muslim world with respect to their treatment by the West, and America specifically, even after 9/11/01. It is equally shocking that the people of Latin America, 200 years into the Monroe Doctrine, have so far not turned to asymmetric war against the U.S.
“And on the decks it will lay
Picked by the hands of the peons
At the lowest possible wages
While the profits are made by the strangers
From far away”
-Phil Ochs, ‘United Fruit’.
Never heard of the drug wars? It seems they are winning.
Complaining about “Open Borders” is absurd: here in Arizona Brandon has been busily Building Back Better Trump’s wall, which had 30+ gaps in it (Trump’s contractor buddy was apparently being paid by the number of sections erected, so skipped hard areas (washes or inconvenient elevation jumps). Brandon has just recently finished closing almost all the gaps asylum migrants were coming through. That was in the relatively flat areas: there are still mountainous areas that can be ecologically devastated, but that will be a slower process.
Currently there is a cartel war going on in the Mexican side of the border so the migrant flow has ground to a halt (not in the media: we know this from first hand accounts in a Mexican border town). But the reasons for the migrant flow have not disappeared: about two thirds ecological catastrophe, and a third political violence according to a friend who is doing a detailed survey of migrants.
Some of the commenters sound like Trumpies or Hillary, whining about these “deplorables” invading their pristine utopias. Get a grip people! Limited tax revenues is not a fact of nature, it was a carefully constructed policy. We handle hundreds of migrants a day in Tucson who are mostly traveling to family: F-ing New York City can do it too if it weren’t for their racist cop mayor.
And PLEASE: save your contempt for hypocritical Democrat politicians and not the migrants fleeing intolerable conditions.
I don’t blame people for not knowing about Biden’s Build Back Better Trump’s wall, he hasn’t advertised it. But we have seen it going on in Arizona for 18 months or so. And the motivation is obvious: the same as Trump’s “Festung Amerika”: quietly (or loudly in Trump’s case) shut off the politically inconvenient flow of migrants fleeing from, in essence, the West’s refusal to do anything about climate disaster (or political violence).
This is going to be a difficult season for immigrant rights activists, now that verbal support among Dem politcos is vanishing. BUT the actual situation under the Deporter in Chief (Obama) was no better or worse than what happened under Trump except that the latter energized anti-immigrant racism. But Obama ALSO separated families just like Trump, just not as maliciously or chaotically.
It seems the u.s. has difficulty dealing with the refugees resulting from u.s. foreign policies, and already has difficulty dealing with the refugees from the economic destruction of u.s. industry. However, neither of these problems compares with the migration problems the near future promises:
“By the end of this century, an estimated 3 to 6 billion individuals— approximately one-third to one-half of the global population—might find themselves confined beyond the livable region, encountering severe heat, limited food availability, and elevated mortality rates because of the effects of climate change.”
from the conclusion section of “The 2023 state of the climate report: Entering uncharted territory” from today’s links.
No disrespect here, but when they ask, where should we go, why not offer a ticket back to their home country? Since most of them are economic migrants, and the US streets are not paved with gold, they can get on with their lives.
“Since most of them are economic migrants, and the US streets are not paved with gold, they can get on with their lives.”
I question your assumptions, and question what I suspect are your beliefs about economic migrants. Besides, the English, Scottish, Irish, Italians, Poles, Latinos … and all were economic and ‘other’ migrants. They did not come to pull nuggets from our golden streets but to escape famine, war, or depredations by their country’s wealthy and corrupt. Here they escape to better chances and a slightly less predatory class of the wealthy and corrupt.
Actually I believe the u.s. streets are paved with gold … just no gold you or I or any economic migrant might lay hands on [I assume you are not among the very rich who do mine gold from our streets.] There are exceptions. Some economic migrants arrive with considerable sums of money and lengthy credentials and of course they can and do mine gold from our streets.
I think a better objection to the influx of migrants might be noting as does
“The Rev Kev” October 25, 2023 at 7:42 am that the u.s. does not take care of its own destitute and down and out. Adding more numbers to the homeless whether migrant or domestic will not have pleasant effects on future domestic tranquility.
Democrats did not “cause” this. Republicans did not “cause” this. Sanctuary cities did not “cause” this. The root cause is extreme inequality of opportunity and safety across national borders. It’s like osmosis. You can’t stop it except by addressing the environments on either side of the border. Now it’s like some nincompoops think that by doling out sufficient punishment in the country with the nominally better environment, the osmosis can be reversed. Zero-sum thinkers.
NAFTA & Clinton’s criminalization of the border were the major cause of the current dilemma. NAFTA created millions of economic refugees because of the impact on indigenous subsistence farmers displaced from their lands. Criminalization of the border made what had been a seasonal two-way migration into a one-way flow. It became too dangerous and expensive for migrants to return home every winter.