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In September 2022, a record-high number of migrants were bused into New York City, with at least nine buses reaching the city on a single Sunday. The Republican governors in Texas, Arizona and Florida claimed their operation to transport migrants to so-called sanctuary jurisdictions like NYC is designed to pressure Democratic politicians and the Biden administration to enact tougher border measures that will deter illegal crossings.

For Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis who continues to callously ship and demonize migrants, seeing them as mere political pawns they have provided an issue for his likely run for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. He has chosen charged cultural issues as his political signature, trying to top Donald Trump at his own game while projecting an image that he is free of all of Trumps baggage. He has attacked migrants, transgender people and gays while supporting gun rights, making the death penalty easier to impose as well as tightening abortion as a way of endearing himself with the Floridian and national right-wing base.

Florida might be the place that DeSantis complacently informs us is where woke goes to die, but its also where teachers salaries are among the lowest in the nation, unemployment benefits are extremely low and DeSantis campaigned against a successful ballot initiative to raise the states minimum wage from $8.65 an hour.

Its one more reason for DeSantis to promote the culture wars so the electorate is diverted from the prime aims of his rule: starving programs committed toward bettering the lives of ordinary people so he can maintain low taxes on the wealthy and corporations. Florida also has no income tax for individuals, and its corporate tax rate of 5.5 percent is among the lowest in the nation. One can only hope that DeSantis has overreached politically by promoting an extremely hard-right-wing line on a raft of issues in a state that is not, for the most part, linked to the deep South culturally and socially. DeSantis continues to reach out to the center-right and Orthodox Floridian Jews by signing legislation that will expand Floridas school choice program and visiting Israel to deliver the keynote address at a high-profile event hosted by The Museum of Tolerance Jerusalem.

DeSantis and other governors cynical and repellent actions have had painful consequences for New York City. There are projections that the city alone could spend up to $1 billion this year to adequately support the migrants with food, housing education and employment. Some 200 asylum-seekers arrive in the city every day, and it costs $380 per day per household to provide them with food and shelter, according to City Hall. Most of the migrants, about 34,600 of them, are being put up in taxpayer-funded emergency shelters mostly hotels with thousands more dropped off at eight Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Centers. Sleeping in the shelters often results in many complaints, especially about children having no access to health care and sometimes coming to school with diarrhea or families experiencing chickenpox outbreaks.

Camille Mackler, executive director of the Immigrant Advocates Response Collaborative, one of the many NYC nonprofits that offer legal support, says they are overwhelmed:

Ive been an immigration lawyer for 20 years and Ive never ever gone through what Ive experienced in the last six months or year, Mackler says. Absolutely no one can take cases.

There is no way of avoiding dealing with the oppressiveness of the conditions that the migrants face.

Mayor Eric Adams and others have called the cost for temporary housing, medical care and other support impossible to sustain. In Adams words: While our city may be the face of the asylum seeker crisis, it is not a crisis we can solve on our own. A comprehensive response from all levels of government especially from our state and federal partners is needed. Adams has directly criticized President Joe Biden for failing New York City in dealing with the migrant crisis. He indicated he wants the federal government to grant temporary protected status to asylum-seekers so they can receive work permits because many of the migrants are being exploited and mistreated. Hopefully, the president will want to avoid having a Black Democratic mayor of the countrys largest city be angry with him. In fact, following Adams remarks, a spokesperson for the White House said the federal government would announce additional migrant funding in the coming weeks.

There are no easy answers to the deluge of migrants. No city can carry the burden without an immense amount of aid. At the same time, NYC cannot morally emulate DeSantis and heartlessly pass the problem on to other localities. Its a painful quandary that must be resolved.

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Leonard Quart: In NYC, practical costs and moral stakes of a migrant ... - Berkshire Eagle