That Damn Torch!

New York’s Mayor Eric Adams says it’s an “emergency,” and New York’s Governor Kathy Hochul says President Biden needs to “take ownership of a crisis.”  They’re talking about the roughly 18-thousand migrants who have come to New York City since April.  

I say, this is the last thing New York needs right now and it needs to be fixed and fixed fast.

New York’s already awful, dangerous and overcrowded homeless shelters are near the breaking point.

Newly arrived immigrant children have sent some New York City public schools into a tailspin.  The New York Post reported on one school, PS 33 Chelsea Prep in Manhattan, that had only one certified bilingual teacher and now has to cope with newly arrived Spanish-speaking children seeking an education.  Mayor Adams even threw shade on his own Department of Education saying, it had “no plan for them.”  Adams said, “The DOE has to get a handle on this.”

It would be one thing if New York was doing great.  Then we could focus on helping these people find housing and jobs. 

But that’s not the case.

New York was headed in the wrong direction even before the flood of immigrants hit the Port Authority Bus Terminal.

Let’s go down the list.

Crime.  Here are the latest crime stats from this September compared to September of last year.  

Five of the seven major crime indexes went up.  Burglaries are up almost 23-percent.  Auto theft is up more than 21-percent.  Rape is up almost 11-percent.  Grand larceny is up more than 21-percent.  Robberies? Up more than 16-percent.  And let’s not even get into the fear of being stabbed, robbed or pushed onto the tracks that stalks subway riders.  One bit of good news; citywide shootings decreased by a little over 13-percent compared to last year. 

Rents.  They’re skyrocketing, chasing young, smart, ambitious people away to Florida and Texas.  

Fiscal crisis. New York is staring at one after the profligate years of Bill duh-Blasio.

Yeah, there are so many huge problems that the city is coping with right now, so thank you Joe Biden and thank you Congressmen and Senators for your years of bickering, dithering and playing politics and for not solving the southern border crisis. 

No one can escape blame and now it’s been dumped into the lap of a Mayor and a Governor who seem to be in over their heads with problems they were already facing.  

Thanks a lot!

This immigration crisis won’t go away anytime soon.  (Thank you, Captain Obvious.)  The illegal immigrants are too useful as political pawns for both parties.  There’s no way Biden is going to admit that assigning Vice President Kamala Harris to fix the issue was akin to asking her how she would like to commit suicide, by taking cyanide and going quickly or by slitting her wrists and bleeding out?  Delaware Joe has put two fellow Democrats, Adams and Hochul, in a real pickle.  She’s trying to stay in office after succeeding “governor groper” and he aspires to higher office even before his head hits the pillow after getting home from Zero Bond at 4am.  

So what’s to be done?

Friend without benefits has these suggestions.

President Biden should immediately order the US Navy to send a troop transport ship to New York to temporarily house the immigrants.      

Governor Hochul, if she wasn’t afraid of alienating upstate voters, should do what New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand suggested and that is to enlist cities upstate to provide emergency housing for the immigrants.   

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy should pass a bipartisan emergency funding bill to help New York and other cities pay for this mess.

Listen, none of these things are going to happen.  And that’s because our country is so politically divided, so partisan and so full of rancor that we’d rather point blame than participate in finding solutions.

Providing a safe haven for the oppressed in a reasonable, orderly and humane way, is something all Americans should agree on.  Yes, we need a secure southern border, 100-percent.  But right now, we have a crisis in Texas, in Arizona and in New York.  Are we so broken that we can’t fix this?

What’s going on now from El Paso to Eleventh Avenue is, and please forgive my language, a shit show.  We elect people to serve in government to provide solutions, not to create huge problems.

New York has always done its part for newcomers to this country.  That huge copper lady holding her torch aloft is in New York’s harbor for a damn good reason. 

But we need help.  The immigrants need help.  And we need it NOW!