Caribbean asylum seekers ‘out in the cold’
NEW YORK (CMC):
THE NEW York Immigration Coalition (NYIC) says the city’s preliminary budget for fiscal year 2025 has left Caribbean and other asylum seekers “out in the cold”.
Many of the migrants and asylum seekers arriving in New York from the southern border of the United States are nationals of Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela and Nicaragua.
NYIC’s executive director, Murad Awawdeh, told the Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC) that Mayor Eric Adams’ budget brief on Tuesday “did not reflect the significant support New York State is committing to address asylum seeker costs to the tune of US$2.4 billion in additional funding.
“The mayor’s now-incomplete proposed budget for financial year 2025 seems to be more of an attempt to improve his polling numbers rather than a considered plan to meaningfully improve the lives of new arrivals or longtime New Yorkers,” he said.
“According to the mayor, this reversal of budget cuts from November was due to increased revenues, downward adjusted census projections for new arrivals, and anticipated cost-savings from things like renegotiating contracts with expensive no-bid shelter operators and moving some social service delivery to nonprofit groups,” he added.
Awawdeh said while it was nice to see the mayor seize on good ideas and make them his own, “it would have been better if he had co-opted another good idea: expanding access to housing vouchers to New Yorkers regardless of immigration status, saving the city three billion dollars while getting people out of shelters and on the road to stability and independence.
“Choosing to release the fiscal year 25 preliminary budget without reflecting increased resources from the State to support migrant service was an attempt to avoid accountability for the crisis he has manufactured so he can continue to paint himself as a victim with no agency or resources to meet the needs of his constituency.”
Awawdeh said the mayor’s “failure to take responsibility for the harm he is actively inflicting on immigrant families and children with his 30 and 60-day shelter restrictions, which risk increasing homelessness in the dead of winter, will only prolong a wholly unnecessary budget crisis at an unprecedented time”.