The mayor of New York, Eric Adams, began a visit to the United States border with Mexico this Saturday while insisting on state and federal authorities to offer solutions to the city, which since last spring has received almost 40,000 immigrants and asylum seekers.
Adams has been calling for a nationwide response to this situation for months and warning of the impact that taking care of all these people is having on the city’s coffers.
This Friday, in a radio interview, he raised the possible cost to between 1,500 and 2,000 million dollars and warned that this could significantly aggravate the Big Apple’s budget deficit.
"That money comes from our schools. It comes from our public safety, our hospitals, our infrastructures"Adams noted.
The Democratic mayor has often been critical of the response that the Joe Biden government is giving to the massive arrival of Latin American immigrants to the country and in the interview he considered that it is "irresponsible" that one is not being seen "true national response".
Since last spring, New York has received tens of thousands of immigrants and asylum seekers, many of them sent on buses chartered by the Texas government, which has been using that strategy to distribute new arrivals while denouncing the situation at the border.
As Adams said yesterday, last week an average of 400 new people arrived a day, which threatens to overwhelm the shelters and hotels that the city is using to house them.
"Based on our projections, we anticipate that we will be unable to continue housing asylum seekers, and have issued an appeal for assistance to New York State beginning this weekend."explained the mayor.
He explained that this request to the state is reserved only for acute emergencies, and has materialized in the request to accommodate 500 immigrants, but "if the city continues to see the numbers swell, we’ll need to raise our estimates as well".
Adams’ office has barely provided details about the visit to the border, but the mayor is expected to pass through El Paso (Texas) and other nearby areas and to attend the media this Sunday.