🎙️ Voice is AI-generated. Inconsistencies may occur.
"We are about to experience a financial tsunami that I don't think the city has ever experienced," warned New York City Mayor Eric Adams at a recent meeting about the city's migrant crisis. "Every service in this city is going to be impacted, from child services to our seniors, to housing."
According to Adams, the status quo of 110,000 migrant arrivals in just the last year is utterly unsustainable and threatens to "destroy the city." To address the financial impact of the crisis, which he estimates could cost $12 billion by 2025, he directed city agencies to cut 5 percent from spending by November.
New York is hardly alone. Cities across the U.S. are experiencing crises in social services and severe budget shortfalls because of the unprecedented migrant influx. Chicago is facing a $538 million budget shortfall for 2024 with more than a third of that shortfall resulting from the migrant crisis, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. And according to Axios, the city of Denver is in the midst of a budget crisis after spending more than $23 million to provide services to migrants since December, with costs of up to $1,000 per migrant per week.
Clearly, the migrant crisis resulting from the Biden administration's refusal to secure our southern border has created impossible burdens for municipalities across the country. The idea of sanctuary cities was to protect immigrants from ICE raids. But no city can manage endless floods of migrants pouring through an open border.
The New York Post recently reported that upwards of 150,000 migrants got notices to appear before immigration judges in July, more than three times the number the Biden administration admits to under its "special parole program" for asylum seekers (a program Congress never authorized in the first place). The Post called the policy a "charade," and that is precisely correct: 150,000 illegal migrants a month (1.8 million a year) is a rate that no country can sustain.
I'm actually in favor of immigration—legal immigration. High fences, wide gates. Politicians in the past have appealed to xenophobia and bigotry in calling for a tough border policy. My call for a tough border comes from a different place. It comes from compassion and humanitarian conscience.
I call upon all Americans, of every party and political persuasion, to face facts. President Biden's loose border policy has been a disaster. Under Biden, it's easier for migrants to enter illegally than legally. His policy is tantamount to "narrow gate, no fence."
The result of this de facto open border policy has been a humanitarian crisis of unimaginable proportions. As I discovered when I visited the border crossing hotspot of Yuma, Arizona, in early June, we have essentially shopped out our immigration policy to the drug cartels.
It isn't only border communities that have been caught in the crossfire. Civil disorder is encroaching into the interior of the U.S. as destitute migrants flood American cities, overwhelming humanitarian resources. New York's Mayor Adams insists that cities are being "undermined" by having to shoulder the costs of caring for migrants,. He called on federal leaders to find solutions to the issue.
I agree.
As president, I will secure the border to get the cartels out of the human trafficking business. Second, I will work with other countries to stem the tide of migrants. Finally, I will build wide doors for those who wish to enter legally, so that the U.S. can remain a beacon of freedom and diversity. This includes funding the administrative infrastructure for lawful, orderly immigration to this country.
Current policies are failing our country and putting an intolerable strain on American cities that have already faced unprecedented challenges in the last three years. We desperately need a different approach.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a Democratic candidate for president.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
