The New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC) says that New York City’s preliminary budget for fiscal year 2025 has left Caribbean and other asylum seekers “out in the cold.”
Many of the migrants and asylum seekers arriving in New York from the southern border of the United States are nationals of Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela and Nicaragua.
NYIC’s executive director, Murad Awawdeh, told the Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC) that Mayor Eric Adams’ budget brief on Tuesday “did not reflect the significant support New York State is committing to address asylum seeker costs to the tune of US$2.4 billion in additional funding.
“The Mayor’s now-incomplete proposed budget for financial year 2025 seems to be more of an attempt to improve his polling numbers rather than a considered plan to meaningfully improve the lives of new arrivals or longtime New Yorkers,” he said.
“According to the Mayor, this reversal of budget cuts from November was due to increased revenues, downward adjusted census projections for new arrivals, and anticipated cost-savings from things like renegotiating contracts with expensive no-bid shelter operators and moving some social service delivery to nonprofit groups,” he added.
Awawdeh said while it was nice to see the Mayor seize on good ideas and make them his own, “it would have been better if he had co-opted another good idea: expanding access to housing vouchers to New Yorkers regardless of immigration status, saving the city three billion dollars while getting people out of shelters and on the road to stability and independence.
“Choosing to release the fiscal year 25 preliminary budget without reflecting increased resources from the State to support migrant service was an attempt to avoid accountability for the crisis he has manufactured so he can continue to paint himself as a victim with no agency or resources to meet the needs of his constituency.”
Awawdeh said the Mayor’s “failure to take responsibility for the harm he is actively inflicting on immigrant families and children with his 30 and 60-day shelter restrictions, which risk increasing homelessness in the dead of winter, will only prolong a wholly unnecessary budget crisis at an unprecedented time.
“Immigrant New Yorkers deserve better and all working families deserve more than just the bare minimum from this administration. New Yorkers didn’t fall for his attempt to scapegoat immigrants for his fiscal management choices before, and we won’t be fooled now.”
The deputy director of Make the Road New York, another immigrant advocacy group, Natalia Aristizabal, said Adams has continued his “wholly irresponsible” approach to New York City’s budget.
“This govern-by-whiplash approach would be laughable if its effects were not so tragic: reduced hours at libraries, fewer resources for schools, and communities divided against one another because of the mayor’s divisive rhetoric,” she said.
“And let’s not be fooled. The Mayor is still trying to massively cut our public schools and other critical services, while boosting funds to an already bloated NYPD that has flouted transparency and accountability measures at every turn. Our communities will continue to rise up to stop this recklessness from City Hall,” Aristizabal said.
Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, the son of Grenadian immigrants, told CMC that, while restoring key services in this budget is “vital”, “it does not undo the several previous rounds of cuts, or the damage done.
“This restoration isn’t the result of solid budgeting, but misleading math — single-handedly slashing services based on inaccurate projections, then reversing them,” Williams said. “New Yorkers’ trust in government erodes any time they are misinformed by government about policies and programmes.
“The financial challenges our city faces are valid, but too often the administration’s characterisation of them is not, and their first impulse is always to cut. I urge the administration, as it works with the Council toward a final budget, to adhere to our mandate to be both fiscally and morally responsible in governing.”
Adams has defended his administration action early in the budget cycle by implementing a citywide hiring freeze and Programme to Eliminate the Gap (PEG) savings programme.
“These actions helped balance the budget and stabilise the city’s financial position without layoffs, tax hikes, or major disruption to city services, and their success, along with better-than-expected tax revenue growth, ultimately allowed for the restorations of funding for public safety, quality of life and young people,” he said in releasing the preliminary budget on Tuesday.
“Our administration came into office focused on making New York City safer, more prosperous, and more livable. With two years of hard work, we are heading in the right direction,” he added.
The Mayor said New York City has continued to effectively manage the asylum seeker humanitarian crisis largely on its own without substantial federal or state aid — including getting on track to reduce city-funded spending on the crisis over financial years 24 and 25, primarily by helping put migrants on a path to self-sufficiency and reducing the household per-diem costs of providing care.
He said to date, New York City has provided care for more than 170,700 asylum seekers, with over 68,000 currently still in the city’s care.
-CMC NEWS-