No human is illegal, but some buses are
“In Bid to Slow Migrant Surge, Adams Restricts Bus Arrivals Into New York” (NYT):
Mayor Eric Adams placed limits for the first time on Wednesday on how migrants arrive in New York, pushing back against continuing efforts by the governor of Texas to send tens of thousands of asylum seekers to the city.
In an executive order, Mr. Adams required charter bus companies to provide 32 hours’ advance notice of the arrival of a busload of migrants in the city and limited the times of day at which migrants can be dropped off.
The change, a year and a half into a crisis that has consumed the Adams administration, comes after 14 busloads of migrants arrived from Texas in a single night last week, the highest total recorded since the spring of 2022.
“We cannot allow buses with people needing our help to arrive without warning at any hour of day and night,” Mr. Adams said during a virtual news conference with the mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson, and the mayor of Denver, Mike Johnston. “To be clear, this is not stopping people from coming, but about ensuring the safety of migrants and making sure they can arrive in a coordinated and orderly way.”
Companies that violate the executive order face class B misdemeanor charges, which could result in three months in jail and a $500 fine for individuals and a $2,000 fine for corporations. Buses violating the order may also be seized by the Police Department.
Under the terms of the executive order, buses can unload migrants only between 8:30 a.m. and 12 p.m., Monday through Friday. People must be dropped off at a specified location in the Times Square area or another location that city officials approve.
We are informed that low-skill migrants make us richer, but the article says that 10 percent of Denver’s budget is now devoted to housing migrants.
After the City of Chicago recently instituted similar regulations on bus companies, Texas responded by sending buses to the suburbs of Chicago instead, according to Mr. Johnson.
The buses have been “literally dropping families off in the middle of nowhere,” sowing “an incredible amount of chaos,” he said.
It is unclear if Mr. Abbott will follow a similar playbook by sending buses to places outside New York City. A spokesman for Mr. Abbott did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
If that happened, Mr. Goldfein said, “that would only highlight the recklessness and total disregard for the welfare of the people who are passengers on these buses.”
I continue to be fascinated by progressives who say that Texas is a place where nobody should live, e.g., because of restrictions on abortion care, and at the same time that migrants are harmed by being provided with free transportation to Massachusetts, New York, or Illinois. Isn’t it worth a few days of sleeping in a church basement in order to enjoy a lifetime of governance by Democrats rather than suffering tyrannical Republic rule?
The New York Times ends the article by referring to becoming wealthier and culturally richer as a “crisis”: