Mayor Eric Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul on Monday listed some ways they believe the White House could speed up work authorizations for migrants seeking asylum, increasing their pressure on President Joe Biden as New York City continues to receive thousands of arrivals each week.
At a joint news conference in Brooklyn, Adams and Hochul, both Democrats, presented a united front as they pleaded with the Biden Administration to bypass a divided Congress and take executive action to make it easier for asylum seekers to legally seek work in New York.
Specifically, they called on the White House to relax the 180-day waiting period before asylum seekers can get a legal work permit, while also calling on the White House to redesignate “temporary protected status” for migrants arriving from a number of countries, including Venezuela, Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador, for another 18 months.
“We have one message: Let them work,” Adams said. “That is our clear message that we’re sending. We must expedite work authorization for asylum seekers, not in the future, but now.”
The mayor continued: “If we don’t get it done through a presidential action [rather than through Congress], we are going to slow down the progress we need.”
A White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.
The governor and mayor laid out their requests at Union Square Events, a catering and hospitality company in Industry City.
They were joined by representatives from organized labor, the hospitality industry and business organizations, all of whom sounded support for allowing asylum seekers to work on an expedited basis as a way of alleviating the ongoing worker shortage.
Their requests come as New York has seen an increase in migrant arrivals since the expiration of the United States’ pandemic-era border restrictions known as Title 42. According to Adams, more than 5,800 migrants arrived in the city last week; more than 70,000 have arrived since last year.
Hochul, a Biden supporter like Adams, has become increasingly public in her demands of the federal administration over the past two weeks, while Adams has been vocally calling for additional federal aid for months.
The governor has asked Biden to open and fund migrant housing facilities on federal properties like Brooklyn’s Floyd Bennett Field, as well as military installations across the Northeast. On Monday, Hochul said her administration has also been considering the possibility of housing migrants in hangars at John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens. She also floated the possibility of temporarily housing people at State University of New York facilities, as well as former correctional facilities and psychiatric centers that are now closed.
Hochul acknowledged there is some disagreement over whether Biden has the authority to unilaterally relax work authorization requirements for asylum seekers. But she said the situation has gotten to a point where he has to try.
“We’re simply saying, I understand that is what is written on the books,” she said. “But we need your help to adapt to a circumstance which has right now reached a crisis situation.”
The governor said she has not yet received a “flat no” from the White House on any of her requests. She said allowing the migrants to work could help ingratiate them in communities that have otherwise been hesitant to accept them.
“I want to continue working with [the White House] and help them understand, as you heard here today, the great opportunity to change the whole narrative around these individuals,” Hochul said.
Adams and Hochul said they have been working together on identifying places to transport migrants to help alleviate the city’s burden. Hochul said she will have more to announce on that front “briefly.”
