Enough finger-pointing
It’s past time for state, federal leaders to come together to address New York’s migrant crisis
How much time and money is wasted in the early days of a crisis because public officials are caught up in blaming other public officials for insufficient action?
It probably depends on the emergency nature of the crisis at hand. If it’s a flood or earthquake, bureaucrats tend to come together more quickly. But when the landscape is a political minefield, we are far more likely to be forced to endure a maddening period of finger-pointing and inertia.
To a great extent, that’s what New Yorkers are living through as the state grapples with the sheltering and support of tens of thousands of migrants who have arrived in the state in recent months.
Despite the ongoing nature of the problem. politicians appear to be filling the final days of summer with a flurry of accusations that could be diagrammed like a three-way standoff at the end of a Western: Gov. Kathy Hochul’s administration has criticized New York City Mayor Eric Adams for failing to take advantage of state-provided resources and demanded that President Joe Biden’s administration provide more funding; Mayor Adams has assailed the governor and the president, as well as suing upstate officials and making the goofy proposal that counties should accept proportional numbers of migrants regardless of their ability to support them; and the White House, in the person of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, razzed the governor and the mayor for their handling of the situation.
It’s time for the performative letter-writing to cease — though we’re confident this editorial will produce several more — and for all parties to work together toward the same goals: finding available shelter and support systems for migrants in communities throughout the state; working with local officials to secure those resources and build more; and ensuring that young migrants are getting an education and older ones are able to seek the gainful employment that will provide them with income (and, by the way, offset labor shortages in a number of sectors).
The best solution, of course, is comprehensive federal immigration reform — but that fix has remained elusive for decades, due in part to a calcified version of the finger-pointing epidemic we’re seeing in miniature this month.
New Yorkers are clearly paying attention. According to a recent Siena Research Institute survey, a whopping 82 percent of respondents said the migrant influx represented a serious problem (54 percent said it was very serious). A plurality (46 percent) agreed with the statement that migrants resettling here over the past two decades has been more of a burden than a benefit (32 percent).
Also of note in the same poll: All three of the people with the most responsibility for New York’s response to the crisis — the governor, the mayor and the president — have job performance ratings that were as underwater as a coral reef. While even the sturdiest surveys are snapshots of a moment in time, this one should be a bright neon warning sign that elected officials need to pivot from the blame game to the work of finding a durable and sustainable set of fixes — for the sake of current citizens as well as those who hope to become new Americans.