Reality doesn’t care what political party you are a part of. Reality doesn’t have platitudes or talking points. Governor Kathy Hochul got hit with a dose of reality so hard that all the diatribes she gave when running for office fell flat on its face with the explosion of illegal migrants that is overwhelming New York.
The irony of the Democrats is that they can accurately predict what the climate will be in a hundred years, but cannot see that opening the southern border and telling hundreds of millions of people to come over will destroy the economy today. Less than two years ago, Hochul was toeing the Democratic line about her willingness to accept anyone and everyone from all over the world without thought to the consequences if that were to become a reality.
“As you know,” Hochul said in December 2021, “the Statue of Liberty is inscribed. It says, ‘give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to be free. You’re welcome with open arms, and we’ll work to keep you safe...’ We’ll not only house you, but we’ll protect you.” When this was happening, millions of people had already crossed the southern border in the first year of the Biden administration. Hochul didn’t care; she can spout as many platitudes as she wants because the border crisis exists in red states like Arizona and Texas.
Two years later, though, after over 7 million people have illegally entered the country after being given access by a feckless administration, a tiny percentage of what those border states have had to deal with lands in the Empire State, and Hochul is waving the white flag. “We have to get the word out that when you come to New York, you’re not going to have more hotel rooms, we don’t have capacity,” Hochul said this week. “So we have to also message properly that we’re at a limit - if you’re going to leave your country, go somewhere else.”
According to Eric Adams, who last August was welcoming busses of migrants from Texas for a photo op, this is a crisis he cannot see the end of. The current estimate is that it will cost the city approximately $12 billion over the next three years. For context, the total NYC budget is around $104 billion which is $30 billion more than it was a decade ago. The wealthy are fleeing New York while the poor are flooding it. This is a recipe for disaster.
Biden isn’t doing much to help New York, promising $140 million to the city but keeping the border wide open. This past summer saw two developments at the border: a record high 304,000 crossings in a single month, and the Biden administration suing Texas for erecting barriers to keeping people out. The message from Biden is crystal clear: Bring them in!
These costs are already playing out. The Adams administration just extended their contract duration with the NYC Hotel Association until August 2026. The deal costs $1.365 billion, covers rental fees for over 100 hotels, and is nearly 5 times the original deal. The average cost per room is $185 per day. Adams was endorsed for mayor by the Hotel Trades Council early in the 2021 election.
They are hoping that the crisis will abate through the lifetime of this contract extension, but there is no reason to believe it will if Biden is reelected. Videos of tens of thousands of migrants coming through Eagle Pass, Texas, are making their rounds on social media. When asked by Peter Doocy at Fox News what the White House calls it when 10,000 people cross the border in a single day, Press Secretary Karine Jean Pierre refused to answer and then went to another question. She then went on to blame Republicans for the crisis, of course.
Republicans have been sounding the alarm about the border for decades. When they were in charge, however, there was little done to make permanent changes to stop the surge. Some band-aids were placed, but nothing close to what needs to be accomplished. Until there is the political will to actually fix what is happening, cities like New York will pay the literal price for this self-made crisis.
