Point and Counterpoint: Who Should Pay for the Estimated 50,000 Asylum Seekers Who Have Flooded into NYC?

Mayor Adams claims that New York City is being “destroyed” by the federal government’s failure to contain the country’s migrant crisis. In other words, our mayor wants our President to pick up the multi-billion dollar tab for the influx of migrants to the five boroughs.

Sorry, Mayor Adams. New York City needs to help bail itself out of its migrant crisis shortfall. That’s the price the nation’s top sanctuary cities — NYC, L.A., Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco— and other liberal cities must pay for providing sanctuary to illegal immigrants.

Sanctuary cities limit their cooperation with the federal government’s effort to enforce immigration law. So why should the federal taxpayer absorb the full cost of asylum seekers or undocumented immigrants? Especially when they’re here illegally.

Of course, the federal government should shoulder a fair share of NYC’s immigration burden. This is, after all, a national border crisis.

But Governors Georg Abbott and Ron DeSantis weren’t wrong to send migrants from Texas and Florida to New York and Massachusetts. Texas and Florida are not sanctuary states; California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, New York, Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia are.

New York City is not only the largest sanctuary city in the nation, but one of the oldest. In August of 1989, then-Mayor Ed Koch signed an executive order barring the disclosure of information about an individual’s immigration status unless required by law or if the subject “is suspected...of engaging in criminal activity.”

Koch also issued executive orders allowing illegal aliens to access city services, which were subsequently reissued by Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2003. The city’s pro-sanctuary stance only stiffened during the eight years of Bill de Blasio’s mayoralty, including adopting policies of non-compliance with most immigration warrants.

Biden and Adams should split the bill.

Ken Frydman is CEO of Source Communications, a strategic and tactical communications firm in Manhattan. He considers himself a moderate Republican and was a one time press advisor to Rudy Giuliani in his first successful run for mayor but turned into a critic of Giuliani’s more recent antics on behalf of Donald Trump.