County’d out

Good going by New York City in filing suit in state court against 30 counties that have issued preposterous emergency orders to try to prohibit the arrival of migrants who could be sent to hotels in their jurisdictions, at NYC’s own cost. This follows a federal judge slapping down Rockland and Orange Counties’ orders over clear discriminatory intent.

Let’s have a quick decision ruling that these counties can’t unilaterally ban the arrival of certain migrants in their jurisdictions — not under the U.S. Constitution, and not under state law.

We’ll repeat what we’ve said before, that just because it’s absurd for these localities to attempt to categorically restrict the placement of asylum seekers in private hotels in their jurisdictions doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a good idea to bus people to localities that haven’t coordinated to receive them.

Lest Mayor Adams forget, this is the exact same pattern that triggered the crisis that he’s so keen on mitigating now, and ultimately it doesn’t matter if he thinks it’s unfair or wants the upstate counties to share the burden. It all ends the same way, with desperate migrants being shuffled around as political chess pieces while leaders that all have much more power than them bicker and launch recriminations at each other.

What they need is a stable place to get their footing and establish their new lives, and no, it shouldn’t fall on New York City alone to be that place, but rather than just sending them out to localities that are going to fight tooth and nail to make them feel unwelcome, what really needs to happen is a top-down, coordinated strategy of the type only authorities above the NYC government can provide.

That’s looking at you, Gov. Hochul, and especially at you, President Biden. Stepping back doesn’t make things less chaotic, it makes them far more chaotic, to the detriment of everyone. Let’s use the federal government’s vast resources to place migrants where they’ll be welcomed and accommodated, and give them the work authorization they desperately need.