A better bussing

As Mayor Adams touts a program to provide asylum seekers bus tickets to the Canadian border and elsewhere, bad-faith detractors will cry hypocrisy, not understanding or caring about the clear and basic distinction that New York’s efforts — unlike Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s opportunistic political theater — are about getting asylum seekers about where they’ve explicitly asked to go, not misleading or forcing them into the unknown.

That’s not to say that getting to Canada, or anywhere else for that matter, means that they’ve arrived in the land of milk and honey, and New York officials should take care not to slip into the shameful Abbott routine of painting an overtly rosy picture just to get migrants out of the city. Yet if after a clear-headed explanation of the risks and realities of heading out of town, that’s an asylum seeker’s choice, then there’s no reason the city can’t or shouldn’t facilitate the passage.

Adams should also recognize that in all-but-telling migrants to enter Canada via Roxham Road, he’s fundamentally telling them to violate Canadian law. A quirk of a so-called safe third country agreement between the United States and Canada is that migrants who try to seek asylum at a Canadian port of entry will be turned back to the United States, but those who cross illegally won’t.

Canadian officials are now seeking to renegotiate that agreement to apply to people at all points across the border. If that happens, the City Hall must let migrants know that they cannot expect to be able to cross into Canada if they were to accept bus tickets to Plattsburgh.

In any case, Adams is right to assist asylum seekers in their quests to other places, particularly given that many of them did not really get that chance at the hands of cynical opportunists who bussed and flew them for political brownie points, not to actually help them. The only thing wrong with this picture is that it’s New York City handling it itself. Where are the feds?