Welcoming Our Newest New Yorkers: A Review
By Jumaane D. Williams, Public Advocate for the City of New York
In the summer of 2022, the first bus of people seeking asylum at the southern border arrived in our city. What was initiated as a callous and cruel political ploy by Republican governors has become an ongoing crisis as our city attempts to provide shelter and support to tens of thousands of newly arrived New Yorkers, with little support from state or federal partners.
My office has worked to be on the ground in this effort, both welcoming and supporting asylum seekers directly and in our advocacy to the state and federal government. This review documents some of those efforts over the last year and a half, and attempts to chart a course for the next phase of the effort to provide support and safety to people in dire need, upholding both our governing and moral mandate.
This is a national issue, and as documented in this review, it requires a comprehensive federal response, as well as state support with both financial and infrastructural needs. At the same time, while we continue advocacy for that essential action, there are things we can do in the city right now, which support from other levels of government will bolster. Among the most critical in this category are expanded legal support for people seeking asylum, to initiate, facilitate, and expedite the process, and stability for migrants who have arrived, rather than the chaos and cost of uprooting families every 60 days, as the administration has recently begun to do. We need legal support for migrants in need, not legal challenges to the right to shelter all New Yorkers are entitled to.
As important as what actions we take in response to this ongoing crisis are the things we do not do. We cannot allow for the otherizing or vilifying people coming to our city in dire need, and we cannot stand quietly when leaders would do the same. Nor can we have leaders scapegoating the migrant crisis for the many other issues our city faces, such as crime, or for the budget cuts that continue to slash services citywide. We can, and we must, both acknowledge the challenges we face and lead with compassion.
We understand the frustrations of longtime New Yorkers, particularly in Black and Brown communities, who have never seen the focus or funding that they deserve. And we don’t ask them to forget their frustrations – only to aim them at who is truly to blame for decades of dysfunction – a government which only responds to acute crises, rather than addressing longstanding harms. Both the people seeking asylum and longtime New Yorkers seeking services echo the same message. “We are hurting, we’ve been hurting for a long time. Please do not take actions that will only hurt us more. “
The call to center compassion extends beyond the halls of government and into our communities and homes. I am a first-generation American, and so many in our city know the immigrant experience, firsthand or from family. New Yorkers are welcoming, defined by our shared humanity and our diversity of background and experience. When the first buses arrived, we echoed the welcoming sentiment on the Statue of Liberty, but as time has passed, the narrative has shifted and division has been sown. We must know that the struggle we face supporting asylum seekers is far more manageable than the struggles migrant families fled to come here, and as a new year is underway, renew our commitment to do all we can, with all we have, and bring the spirit and substance of welcome to our new and aspiring New Yorkers, as we have throughout our history.
