Mayor Eric Adams has messed up the migrant crisis in NYC
It’s a political given that the public wants optimistic leaders, especially in the darkest of times.
But just as pessimism is contagious, so is the Happy Warrior approach.
Mayor Adams, to judge by recent statements on the migrant crisis, does not subscribe to that belief.
His remarks Monday were so gloomy, they verged on hopelessness.
“It’s not going to get any better — from this moment on it’s downhill,” Adams told reporters.
“There is no more room.”
Yikes.
The mayor was speaking after a video revealed hundreds of asylum-seekers sleeping on sidewalks outside Manhattan’s historic Roosevelt Hotel, which the city turned into an intake center for the never-ending stream of desperate humanity descending on Gotham.
Disaster has come to the central business district, but it’s not going to stop there, Adams warned.
“Eventually this is going to come to a neighborhood near you, and it is — 91,000 people,” he added, citing the total number of migrants thought to be in the five boroughs.
About half are living in city facilities, which have been expanded in a wildly expensive, helter-skelter fashion.
In a cryptic follow-up, the mayor said that “we have to figure out how we’re going to localize the inevitable, that there’s no more room indoors.”
He coupled that with a vow, saying: “I can assure you that this city is not going to look like other cities where there are tents up and down every street.”
If there is any good news, the mayor forgot to mention it.
Nor did he offer any new ideas.
His gloom is understandable, but not for the reasons he believes.
Although President Biden’s open-border policy is ultimately responsible for the disaster roiling New York and other cities, Adams has consistently made a bad situation worse.
He apparently intends to stay the course no matter how much he compounds the problems Biden created.
Welcome-wagon regret
The mayor’s first mistake was to welcome thousands of early migrants by rolling out the welcome wagon and boasting about the city’s sanctuary status.
That was more than a year ago, with just a few thousand illegal border crossers in the city, but the mayor still doesn’t seem to realize there is no limit to the number who can come here.
Soon it will be 100,000, then 125,000, then 150,000, all of them wards of local taxpayers.
It is a problem that will swamp the bureaucracy, lead to reduced services to residents and spill over into social problems.
As always, the poor will pay the highest price for government failure.
Exhibit A is the appearance of seedy brothels and a daylight sex market in Corona, Queens.
It’s a direct result of the migrant crush, which often involves sex-trafficking of young women, police tell The Post.
But as long as the border is open and as long as the city is uniquely required to offer shelter, and as long as it foolishly pushes for the illegal immigrants to be allowed to work here upon arrival, why would they go anywhere else?
The price tag for welcoming this unvetted exodus of Central Americans, with Asians, Africans and South Americans mixed in, is estimated at $4.3 billion for two years and climbing.
Inevitably, housing, feeding, healing, policing and educating the migrants — along with spiraling public disorder of the kind seen over the weekend — will add to the crime-driven flight of taxpayers and employers, potentially creating a new fiscal crisis.
So much for Dems’ help
Adams’ second mistake was to assume that New York would get major financial assistance for the costs. Yet despite his repeated pleas, he is getting relatively little help from fellow Democrats in Albany and next to none from Dems in Washington.
At some point, the refusal to help should have persuaded him he was alone on the road to destruction and needed to find an exit.
But he didn’t use his political leverage during last year’s election, and still hasn’t.
The mayor’s third mistake was to believe he could get some relief by sending busloads of migrants to the suburbs and upstate, but he ran into predictable resistance.
Even the limited success he had was dwarfed by the number of new arrivals to the city, which sometimes hits nearly 1,000 a day.
Meanwhile, radical activist groups are actually demanding City Hall do more.
The Legal Aid Society and the Coalition for the Homeless criticized the scene of people sleeping outside the Roosevelt, calling it “heartbreaking and maddening.”
“Denying new arrivals placement and forcing people to languish on local streets is cruel and runs afoul of a range of court orders and local laws,” the groups said in a statement.
Turn tables on activists
Adams should counter their criticism by challenging them to house some of the migrants in their offices or, better yet, open their homes.
The ridiculousness of the idea that the city should do more and more and more must be a wake-up call for Adams.
There’s no limit to the demands, but there is a limit to what the city can do without effectively committing suicide.
The madness creates an opportunity for him to get radical in a good way.
One thing he hasn’t tried is a massive reverse-migration plan, where the city offers to fly as many migrants as possible back to their home countries.
Given their apparent misery and slim prospects here, some, perhaps hundreds, perhaps thousands, would accept and be grateful for a free ride home.
A well-publicized effort would also underscore the point that the city has reached its limit and send a signal to others planning to come here that they shouldn’t bother.
Would it work?
It’s worth a try if only because nothing else has.
Besides, all the city has to lose is its reputation for being a sap that is rapidly descending into chaos.
No precedent for DOJ bias
A friend writes about the corruption of the Department of Justice under Attorney General Merrick Garland, as seen in the Hunter Biden probe.
“The current situation is a reverse image of Richard Nixon’s infamous Saturday Night Massacre — which marks its 50th anniversary this October.
“The difference is that back then you had principled people running the Justice Department. People who placed the nation’s interests ahead of their career interests and who would rather resign than carry out the dictates of a damaged, possibly criminal president.
“Today you have exactly the opposite at DOJ.”
Just want Don gone
Reader Ruben Morales is perplexed by the support for Donald Trump, writing: “I don’t understand how his most loyal voters still see Trump as the shining star. He hasn’t changed one bit. The name-calling, the insults, and his enormous ego are still prevalent.
“He created the Jan. 6 fiasco. He called his most loyal supporter, Mike Pence, a coward. He won’t even attend the first GOP debate. My wish is for both Joe Biden and Trump to fade into the sunset and retire.”
