New York to limit migrant families’ stays

New York will start limiting the length of time that asylum-seeking families can stay in city shelters, the mayor announced Monday.

Mayor Eric Adams said the largest US city is “full” and cannot continue to accept the rate of migrant arrivals it has seen in recent months.

“For over a year, New York City has led the response to this national crisis, but significant additional resources, coordination, and support are needed from all levels of government,” Adams said.

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The city is “past its breaking point,” he said.

As the city seeks assistance from federal and state authorities, it will begin providing 60 days’ notice to families with children seeking asylum, warning them they will need to find alternative housing.

Caseworkers will provide increased services to the families — mostly from Latin America, especially Venezuela — find other places to stay.

Last week alone, an average of 600 people per day arrived in the city of 8.5 million inhabitants, the Democratic mayor announced in a statement.

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Currently, more than 64,000 people of the 126,700 who have arrived since the spring of last year depend on municipal services.

The arrivals have mainly been sent by bus from states, governed by Republicans — such as Texas — in protest of Democratic President Joe Biden’s immigration policy.

“We appreciate the White House citing our ‘best practices’ as other cities also deal with this crisis, but with the current surge we’re seeing, a comprehensive, coordinated effort from the federal government to decompress the pressure New York City is under is needed now,” the mayor stressed.

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Obliged by municipal law to provide free accommodation to anyone who requests it, last August the mayor’s office announced that the immigration crisis will cost the city’s coffers $12 billion over three years.

The city, which has already opened more than 210 emergency shelters, including 17 large-scale humanitarian aid centers, will soon open a new center at Floyd Bennett Field Naval Airfield in Brooklyn, where it will shelter 500 families with children.

The mayor of New York, a former police officer who has travelled to Mexico to urge migrants not to come, has demanded the federal government offer a “national solution to a national crisis,” a call which has been joined by Democratic governors from other states affected by the migration crisis.

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