Some illegal immigrants arriving in New York City are realizing it’s not as great as they imagined it’d be.
The city is bursting at the seams trying to shelter the estimated 1,000 migrants that come each day, but hundreds of migrants have been photographed recently sleeping on the sidewalks because the “plain reality [is] that there’s no more room,” one City Hall adviser told Politico.
In addition to shelter, many are also struggling to find work and other basic necessities. And while the city is still an apparent step up from the countries they left, it's not exactly looking like the land of opportunity. According to one, it's "chaos."
For most migrants, the prospect of finding a decent job and safety is enough to justify the arduous, and often dangerous, journey to the United States. But now that they’re here, some say the U.S. is nothing like what they had imagined.
“I thought of New York differently, but now I also see that New York is in chaos,” said a 48-year-old Ecuadorian woman who was also staying at the Roosevelt. The woman, who declined to give her name, told Yahoo News that she, her husband and their 2-year-old child escaped violence in Ecuador, traveling for two months before they eventually reached New York. (Yahoo)
Mayor Eric Adams, who believes this is the greatest "humanitarian crisis the city has ever witnessed," told reporters recently that the city is "running out of money, appropriate space, and personnel" to care for the illegal immigrants.
He signed an emergency executive order in May that suspends the city’s right-to-shelter rules, with his office arguing that without more federal and state support, they just couldn’t keep it up. The Democrat has also tried begging migrants to stop coming, even sending flyers down to the border warning them against making the trek to the Big Apple, but nothing is working for the sanctuary city.
“The immigration system in this nation is broken. It has been broken for decades,” Adams said. “Today, New York City has been left to pick up the pieces.”
Adams' handling of the crisis has led to widespread criticism from residents and is even causing tension with Gov. Kathy Hochul's administration.
According to a recent Siena College survey, 47 percent of New York voters said they disapprove of the job Adams is doing responding to the crisis, compared to 31 percent who approve.