Kathy Hochul, the Democratic governor of New York who, along with NYC Mayor Eric Adams, had been seeking regional work permit options for the thousands of immigrants who have arrived in the city, admitted yesterday that this is not legally possible.
“I am limited by the law,” Hochul said yesterday at a news conference in Midtown Manhattan, two months after she indicated she was researching the permit concept. “Following it has led us to the conclusion that I cannot protect employers in this scenario,” she said, referring to the fact that those who hire people who are not authorized to work in the United States would be violating federal laws.
“I cannot indemnify or protect employers from any type of federal prosecution for violating immigration laws.”
Kathy Hochul – Governor of New York
“I cannot indemnify or protect employers from any type of federal prosecution for violating immigration laws,” Hochul said. “That’s the only barrier. And it’s big”.
Asylum seekers must wait months for their work documents to be approved: the standard 150-day interval between when migrants submit asylum documents and work permit applications is complicated by a system that is overloaded, and immigration reform efforts have long been stalled in Washington, he summarized Daily News.
New York officials have spent the past year asking the federal government to expedite work authorizations for asylum seekers and have found limited success. At one point, Hochul warned the White House that he “might have” to start distributing state working papers. But on Monday he admitted that he couldn’t do it.
From spring 2022 More than 139,000 asylum seekers have arrived in New York City and of them around 66,000 remain in the city’s overloaded shelter system, according to local government counts. The shelter system’s population has gone from less than 50,000 in July 2022 to around 120,000 this month.
Already a month ago, Hochul had also changed the rhetoric of unconditional support for mass immigration, formally expressing his support for Mayor Adams in his attempt to roll back the right to refuge law in New York City.
The law for decades has required that NYC house anyone who requests it. But Mayor Adams has been fighting to amend it amid the massive migration crisis which began the spring of last year with the constant arrival of buses with asylum seekers sent from Texas, in the middle of a national political battle between democrats and republicans.
In September, Democratic Mayor Adams declared that the massive arrival of immigrants will “destroy” the city. Days later he announced a staggered 15% cut in the budget of all municipal agencies to finance the needs of the 110,000 asylum seekers, again blaming the lack of support from President Joe Biden and the governor. But Hochul has since sided with him.
At the beginning of November, Adams canceled at the last minute and without giving explanations several meetings that he had scheduled at the White House (Washington DC) and that he himself had publicized to address the immigration crisis in the city and state of New York, while the Attorney General’s Office Manhattan began an investigation into possible corruption among his 2021 electoral campaign and the government of Türkiye.
2023-11-14 13:17:00
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