By Carlos Esteban*
(Opinion) Declaring yourself a “sanctuary city” looks good and makes a lot of noise; officially proclaiming to the winds that your municipality is open to all immigrants, legal and illegal, is all the rage among Democrats.
But let’s assume you believe that.
In that case, it’s a severe problem, as recently in exclusive Martha’s Vineyard, which panicked at the arrival of just fifty refugees, and now in New York, which is facing an unprecedented crisis of new arrivals, it doesn’t know where to house.
Eric Adams, the new mayor of New York, was determined to make up for the failures of his predecessor Bill de Blasio.
He has declared a state of emergency in the face of many refugee shelters. In contrast, remittances and referrals of refugees continue to pour in from cities along the southern border.
The New York City Department of Homeless Services reports that 62,174 people are housed in the city’s refugee shelters.
That surpassed the previous record of 61,415 set in January 2019, the New York Daily News reports.
The culprit, of course, is the evil Republican Southern states, which do not desire to hold all the illegals pouring into their cities in large waves and have decided to share them with Democrat cities for some time.
The rulers of these cities proclaim that “no one is illegal” and that everyone should be let in.
You want rice? Have two cups.
Still, Adams complains, predicting that housing and providing social services to the newcomers will cost city governments a billion dollars.
“That’s unsustainable. The city will run out of funds for other priorities,” he warned recently.
“Local government cannot be the solution to the national crisis, especially the manufacturing crisis.”
Why are they unable to extrapolate and warn when a city like New York cannot absorb illegal immigrants, let alone a small, poor southern city?
A humanitarian emergency center for immigrants is being built on Randall’s Island.
It would be the first stop for processing immigrants brought to New York City on buses from border states.
The city’s emergency reception system is bursting at the seams and is almost at capacity as the cold season sets in.
In addition to the new population record, the average length of stay has also risen to an all-time high: According to city data, single adults now spend an average of 509 days in emergency shelters.
The data show that families with children are in shelters even longer on average (534 days), and adult families spend a spectacular 855 days in shelters on average.
Last week’s official count showed that about 19,000 Central and South Americans were admitted to the city’s homeless shelters.
Adams said the influx of immigrants could soon push the number of asylum seekers to more than 100,000.
* Carlos Esteban, 58 years old, fifteen years at the leading economic daily EXPANSIÓN, then part of the Recoletos Group, the last three years as head of Interactive Services on the newspaper’s website. Then in Intereconomía, where I founded the Catholic weekly ALBA, I wrote opinion in ÉPOCA, where I also covered the International section, for which I was responsible when La Gaceta was born (as a generalist newspaper). For some years now, I have been working as a freelance, collaborating with different media.