FEW SEEK WORKS PERMIT

Mere 2% want a paycheck

Only about 2% of the 139,500 migrants who have poured into the Big Apple since the asylumseeker crisis started have actually applied for work-authorization permits, the latest data show.

Roughly 3,200 asylum-seekers in New York City have filed the required paperwork needed to start earning a legal paycheck — some 18 months after the relentless migrant influx began, according to figures provided by City Hall.

A total 1,495 of those work authorization applications have been filed through the city’s Asylum Application Help Center since the facility opened in June, the figures show.

Meanwhile, another 1,700 work applications were submitted last month when the Biden administration sent Department of Homeland Security staffers to Gotham for a two-week stretch to help speed through the bureaucratic process.

It isn’t clear how many of them, if any, have since been granted approval.

Still, 2% is a fraction of the 139,500 asylum-seekers who have come through the city’s intake system since spring 2022 — though the 139,500 also accounts for migrants who aren’t eligible to work, including children.

The city knows there are more than 42,000 adult migrants in its care, but the number who are actually work-eligible is a mystery because either the city, state or feds haven’t been fully tracking asylum-seekers after they cross the nation’s southern border.

200 NYC shelters

Currently, there are 65,500 asylum-seekers being put up in the more than 200 Big Applerun shelter sites scattered across the five boroughs.

A record weekly high of 3,900 asylum-seekers arrived in the city early last month.

Since then, the weekly pace of arrivals has been hovering around the 2,500 mark — though more than 2,800 arrived last week, according to City Hall’s figures.

Officials within the Adams administration have cautioned the reprieve may only be temporary.

Meanwhile, the city opened its help center, which is funded by the state, four months ago as a way to help migrants with the streams of paperwork associated with filing asylum claims and work-authorization applications.

Operating out of the Roosevelt Hotel-turned-migrant shelter in Midtown, the help center is staffed by 75 people who handle the paperwork and 20 immigration lawyers.

In addition to the 1,495 workpermit applications filed, the center also has helped submit 6,768 asylum applications and 1,265 Temporary Protected Status — or TPS — applications since opening.

Migrants aren’t eligible to apply for the work permits until they’ve lodged their asylum application papers — and even then, the wait time can be up to another six months.

As the Big Apple continues to shelter tens of the thousands of asylum-seekers, state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli warned in an op-ed this week that the cost of the temporary housing could contribute to a massive 20242025 budget gap.

The state’s top manager estimated the gap could reach $13.8 billion unless Mayor Adams implements cuts in city programs and curbs new spending.

The billions the city will spend to house asylum-seekers pouring in will be a “significant contributor” to that fiscal shortfall — accounting for an estimated 42% of the budget gap, DiNapoli said in the Crain’s op-ed co-authored by the Citizens Budget Commission’s Andrew Rein.

“Many New Yorkers already sense the stress given how the staggering influx of asylum seekers and migrants has strained social services and the budget. The city estimates these costs may grow next year to equal what it spends to run the sanitation and parks departments combined,” DiNapoli said. To ease the burden, the Big Apple last month opened a “reticketing center” where migrants can obtain a free one-way plane ticket to anywhere in the world.

The cost of buying a plane ticket is, in some cases, cheaper than the $380 it sets the city back per day to house an asylum-seeker in one of its shelters.

It’s unclear how many migrants have elected to use the service.