NYC Mayor Adams presses feds to ‘stand up,’ accelerate work permits for migrants amid crisis

Mayor Adams on Thursday urged the federal government to “stand up” and expedite work authorizations for asylum seekers pouring into New York, continuing calls that he began a year ago as relations between New York leaders and the White House remain tense.

“It is time to stop this madness and allow capable, able, willing and ready people to work, to contribute to our society and have a place in the American Dream,” Adams said in a rally at Foley Square. “Let’s let them work.”

The mayor, who has faced fierce protests over the migration crisis in conservative parts of the city, also urged skeptical New Yorkers to remember their own ancestries.

“Go into your lineage. Go see when your parents or grandparents came here,” he said. “Imagine people were saying to them: ‘There’s no place for you here.’ That is wrong. And that is not who we are as a city.”

The mayor delivered his remarks in lower Manhattan one day after Gov. Hochul met with White House officials in Washington and emerged with what she described as incomplete but much-needed federal commitments on work permitting.

After the meeting, the White House said in a statement that it would join New York in embarking upon a “month of action” to help push migrants toward work authorization.

Hochul told NY1 on Wednesday night that asylum seekers with the Customs and Border Protection app would begin to receive notifications about their work status, and that the Homeland Security Department would send staff to Manhattan to help arrivals submit asylum applications.

Hochul said in a statement that the White House commitments marked a “critical first step” but would not be “enough to fully address this crisis or provide the level of support that New Yorkers need and deserve.”

Asylum seekers must wait for months to get their work papers approved: the standard 150-day gap between when they submit asylum papers and work permit applications is complicated by a backlogged work authorization system, creating extensive delays.

The federal Citizenship and Immigration Services agency was gutted under former President Donald Trump and has worked to catch up under President Biden, said Stephen Yale-Loehr, a professor of immigration law at Cornell University.

The 150-day delay between asylum applications and work permit requests cannot be changed without an act of Congress, Yale-Loehr noted — a step considered highly unlikely in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. The federal government reported it is processing 80% of asylum seekers’ work authorization submissions within two months.

The waits pose a headache for local officials who are working to get tens of thousands of migrants out of the shelter system and integrated into the workforce.

More than 100,000 asylum seekers have arrived in New York since spring 2022, and about 60,000 remain in the shelter system, which has seen its population double in a single year, according to city data.

The challenge has put strain on the relationships between Adams, Hochul and President Biden, three moderate Democrats.

Adams and Hochul have worked together to press Biden for more support, but have found themselves at odds over the role the communities outside the city should play in the crisis.

The mayor wants to force upstate communities to welcome asylum seekers; Hochul does not.

In court filings and press statements, their administrations have engaged in several rounds of sniping and recriminations over the past month, though the two leaders publicly insist their partnership is strong.

Whatever their differences, Adams and Hochul remain aligned in their calls for faster federal work permitting.

“We need the national government to stand up. This is not a New York City issue — this is a national issue,” Adams said at Foley Square. “The way goes New York, goes America. And if we don’t get it right in New York City, we’re not going to get it right in America.”