BORDER FARCE
After a record year of crossings, a legal change could prompt millions more to head to the US
NEW YORK: Towering 28 floors above Times Square, New York’s four-star Row NYC Hotel is an ideal place for first-time visitors to sleep in, in the city that never does.
But for two months, its rooms have been filled by new arrivals with barely a dollar to their names, let alone the $600 nightly rate for a basic suite.
They are asylum seekers from Central and South America, some of the 30,000 who have arrived in New York City this year, and their bills are being paid by Mayor Eric Adams in a $1.4bn response to what he declared was a state of emergency.
New York has a proud history of welcoming migrants, of which the Statue of Liberty is a reminder, but Row NYC’s residents did not make that hopeful trip up New York Harbour.
Most arrived two blocks from the hotel at the Port Authority terminal, on buses from the US-Mexico border organised by local and state governments.
Depending on your political persuasion, these bus trips are either a necessary measure to relieve the pressure on border communities, or a cruel act of theatre.
Mr Adams argues that Texas governor Greg Abbott – who has sent 4000 migrants to New York – is using “innocent people as political pawns”.
Some migrants have been used, like those flown to the affluent island of Martha’s Vineyard by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. But it is difficult to deny the crisis itself.
In the past year, a record 2.3 million people have been apprehended at the USMexico border – the equivalent of the combined population of Adelaide, Canberra, Hobart and Darwin, and 37 per cent more than the previous record in 2021.
Of those, about half have been expelled using a controversial pandemic restriction, while another 600,000 are believed to have entered the US without detection.
And while President Joe Biden struggles to respond – an insider described his administration’s policy as “Hail Mary after Hail Mary” – the situation is getting worse.
Next Wednesday, the Title 42 Covid rule used to turn many migrants around will expire. Without this deterrent, authorities are expecting 14,000 people to cross the border every day – double the current rate.
In El Paso, Texas, the veritable dam wall has already begun to break, with 7500 migrants arriving in three days last week. Blake Barrow, the director of the Rescue Mission of El Paso, said it was “like nothing I’ve seen for the last 25 years”.
Finding solutions is the job of Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who met local officials in El Paso this week as some migrants were forced to sleep on cardboard in the streets, despite temperatures plummeting below zero.
“We’re mindful of the fact that Title 42 is going to end,” Mayorkas said. “We’re moving as quickly as we can.”
That was not good enough for Republicans, who will make the border crisis a priority once they take control of the House of Representatives in January.
Biden claims Republicans including Abbott are “playing politics with human beings”. “It’s un-American, it’s reckless,” he said.
The administration is simultaneously being wedged by refugee advocates who say its policies are inhumane. Something has to give.