“Why N.Y.C. Hotel Rooms Are So Expensive Right Now” (NYT, May 25):
The average hotel room rate in the city is $301 a night, a record. A major reason: One of every five hotels is now a shelter, contributing to a shortage of tourist lodging.
In late 2022, as thousands of migrants began to arrive in New York City, city officials scrambled to find places to house them. They quickly found takers: hotels that were still struggling to recover from the pandemic-driven downturn in tourism.
Dozens of hotels, from once-grand facilities to more modest establishments, closed to tourists and began exclusively sheltering migrants, striking multimillion-dollar deals with the city. The humanitarian crisis became the hotel industry’s unexpected lifeline in New York; the hotels became a safe haven for tens of thousands of asylum seekers.
About 65,000 migrants are being sheltered in hotels, tent dormitories and other shelters, in large part because of the city’s legal obligation to provide a bed to anyone who needs one. The city projects it will spend $10 billion over three fiscal years on the migrant crisis.
Low-skill migrants make the U.S. richer economically and culturally, yet it is a “crisis” when more enrichment is happening?
We are informed by the New York Times that Replacement Theory is false, as well as racist. Only a fool could entertain the idea that native-born Americans are being replaced by low-skill immigrants streaming across an open border that is intentionally undefended despite Americans paying nearly $1 trillion/year to fund a military. We are also informed that 20 percent of potential tourists have been replaced by migrants.
From the New York Post:
Who else can profit from low-skill immigration? Government workers! “The Massive Immigration Wave Hitting America’s Classrooms” (Wall Street Journal, May 25):
STOUGHTON, Mass.—Eighth-grader Sandla Desir spoke softly in a classroom recently while reading the Dr. Seuss book, “One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish,” aloud in accented English.
The book isn’t typical material for a 13-year-old. But when Sandla started at O’Donnell Middle School in September, the native Haitian Creole speaker could barely read.
Millions of migrants, most seeking asylum, have crossed the border in recent years and have been allowed to settle in the U.S. until a federal immigration judge decides their fate, a process that can take years. Among the record numbers, federal data suggest, are as many as one million children who have arrived with their families or on their own since 2021.
Districts are faced with the need for additional teachers and staff who can teach English … Adding the 90 shelter students has cost Stoughton, which teaches a total of 3,740 students, at least $500,000 for increased staff and busing costs. The state said it has reimbursed nearly all of that money. … The most immediate upfront costs this year were hiring five new staff members, including two teachers, and contracting for a bus to shuttle students to and from the hotel shelters, Baeta said. The district has gone from seven to 17 English-as-a-second-language teachers in the past five years.
Related:
- “Yes, Immigration Hurts American Workers” (Politico 2016), in which Harvard economists find that the main effect of low-skill immigration is to transfer $500 billion/year (pre-Biden money) from the American working class to elite Americans, e.g., the kinds of folks who own hotels in New York City
The housing of migrants in NYC sounds corrupt. According to the Post the City pays $254 a night for lodging alone for the illegals or about $7500 a month – way more than the average New Yorker spends on his own lodging. You have to wonder how this number was negotiated especially given that the hotel industry and hotel workers are powerful NYC lobbying groups – witness the ban on Airbnb. There is a migrant hotel, a Radisson, about 50 yards outside my back door. The ground floor windows of the hotel are covered with brown paper and typically dozens of people are huddled around the entrance and maybe 30-40 scooters parked in front notwithstanding that parking is not permitted. About every 20 yards on the street a woman stands selling cut fruit in plastic cups arranged on a tray typically with an infant swaddled to her back. The males presumably use the scooters to deliver food to people too lazy to walk the 20 or 30 feet to pick it up themselves.
$254 / person is definitely hugely corrupt. At room rate $301/person, typical room with 2 queen-size bed can house a family of 4 people or at least 2 not related adults, with complementary breakfast.
Making NYC great again, for small group of people.
“ Replacement is a conspiracy theory”. Meanwhile, in America’s 20 largest cities, only 3 have majority White populations:
• 14th – Columbus – 53%
• 18th – Seattle – 61%
• 19th – Denver – 54%
Recently saw interview of a woman in Toronto (originally from Africa, currently unemployed) saying African immigrants were “good for the economy”, because they create jobs for social workers helping African immigrants who were traumatized from living in Africa.
David here thinks the same. He points to sub-par per-capita job growth, 1/4 of which are “uselessness and red tape -added” government jobs on top on existing of millions of government job, that fall in expense, not value added category, with$3-4 trillions of new debt created since “Inflation Reduction Act” and which farther impede value economy growth beyond their expense costs. Hope those new added government jobs are “working” from home or beach.
Immigrants don’t depress the incomes of low-skill natives. In most cases, they take jobs that natives don’t want at any rational income level, or they perform low-skill jobs in a much more efficient way than natives. The idea that if the low-skill migrant goes away, there is a native worker ready to take his job at a higher salary is absurd. Ask any NYC restaurant owner or California farmer. As has been pointed out on this blog many times, low-skilled potential workers in many states make a rational decision not to participate in the workforce.
The Borjas article is nothing more than low-quality pseudo-Marxism disguised as an immigration study.
Most of the ancestors of American whites arrived here without any skills.
The only people who clearly have lost to immigration, for centuries now, are the Native Americans.
This is false. There is large pool of legal immigrants and native citizens who are ready for work.
“North Carolina needed 6,500 farm workers. Only 7 Americans stuck it out.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/05/15/north-carolina-needed-6500-farm-workers-only-7-americans-stuck-it-out/
Talking about communism – North Carolina needs zero farm workers. Unless they already have collective farms owned by state. It would be quick success for new Democrat governor of North Carolina.
Big agro and farms need workers, and they can advertise the jobs and hire. Checking jobs regularly and have never seen farm job advertisement from North Carolina. Know few regular farmers – they employ zero illegals and run profitable farms.
How do Japanese manage to have problems because of rice yield surplus? No immigrants are are involved whatsoever https://www.bbc.com/storyworks/future/the-technology-transforming-agriculture/how-technology-is-transforming-japans-agriculture
Anon: North Carolina doesn’t need any farm workers because North Carolina doesn’t need farms (about 5.6 percent of the economy there). If it doesn’t make sense for a society/economy to farm, the sensible decision is to import food from societies/economies where farming can be done profitably with local labor. The societies with high average IQs don’t import millions of welfare-dependent people just so that they can do more local farming.
We are also informed that low-skill migrants are the ones doing the hard-labor work of building houses for Americans. This is true, a lot of contractors hire them and pay them $200-$300 a day, a decent money if you ask me. However, if you are a fan of This Old House (skim through some on YouTube), you will see that, in any of their episodes, they never have (or don’t want to show it?) a non-American worker!