Sometimes the best way to understand why something is going wrong is to look at what’s going right. The asylum seekers from the border aren’t the only outsiders in town. Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine brought a separate influx of displaced people into U.S. cities that quietly assimilated most of them. “We have at least 30,000 Ukrainian refugees in the city of Chicago, and no one has even noticed,” Johnson told me in a recent interview.
According to New York officials, of about 30,000 Ukrainians who resettled there, very few ended up in shelters. By contrast, the city has scrambled to open nearly 200 emergency shelters to house asylees from the southwest border.
What ensured the quiet assimilation of displaced Ukrainians? Why has the arrival of asylum seekers from Latin America been so different? And why have some cities managed to weather the so-called crisis without any outcry or political backlash? In interviews with mayors, other municipal officials, nonprofit leaders, and immigration lawyers in several states, I pieced together an answer stemming from two major differences in federal policy. First, the Biden administration admitted the Ukrainians under terms that allowed them to work right away. Second, the feds had a plan for where to place these newcomers. It included coordination with local governments, individual sponsors, and civil-society groups. The Biden administration did not leave Ukrainian newcomers vulnerable to the whims of Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who since April 2022 has transported 37,800 migrants to New York City, 31,400 to Chicago, and thousands more to other blue cities—in a successful bid to push the immigration debate rightward and advance the idea that immigrants are a burden on native-born people.
To call this moment a “migrant crisis” is to let elected federal officials off the hook. But a “crisis of politicians kicking the problem down the road until opportunists set it on fire” is hard to fit into a tweet, so we’ll have to make do.
It probably has a lot more to do with the amount and condition of how they arrived than anything. Getting 30k people that largely have passports and money is totally different than 30k people arriving with nothing.
The border also sees way more asylum seekers, which also adds to the difficulty. If Abbot was able to send 37k to New York alone, the numbers he’s dealing with dwarf the 30k Ukrainians New York got.
Getting 30k people that largely have passports and money is totally different than 30k people arriving with nothing.
I don’t see how we’re going to complain about these migrants being broke when we’re simultaneously forbidding them from seeking legal employment. As for the passport issue, it’s not like it’s the migrants fault they’re fleeing areas with dysfunctional governments with disorganized paperwork. With the surveillance technology and level of control we have over our own territory we should be able to find some way to address whatever reasonable security concerns officials might have.
Work authorization would help, but it’s not a silver bullet. These migrants need more aid, and are more economic in nature, as they’ve generally spent a month+ traveling through Mexico in a somewhat constant state of dehydration and starvation. Comparing them to people who mostly had established lives and had to grab what they could to flee a war isn’t really a fair comparison.
What ensured the quiet assimilation of displaced Ukrainians? Why has the arrival of asylum seekers from Latin America been so different? And why have some cities managed to weather the so-called crisis without any outcry or political backlash? In interviews with mayors, other municipal officials, nonprofit leaders, and immigration lawyers in several states, I pieced together an answer stemming from two major differences in federal policy. First, the Biden administration admitted the Ukrainians under terms that allowed them to work right away. Second, the feds had a plan for where to place these newcomers. It included coordination with local governments, individual sponsors, and civil-society groups. The Biden administration did not leave Ukrainian newcomers vulnerable to the whims of Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who since April 2022 has transported 37,800 migrants to New York City, 31,400 to Chicago, and thousands more to other blue cities—in a successful bid to push the immigration debate rightward and advance the idea that immigrants are a burden on native-born people.
Yes, those are the only two reasons. I can’t imagine white another reason might be.
Yes, those are the only two reasons. I can’t imagine white another reason might be.
I doubt that the mayor of New York is a white supremacist, but I could be wrong.
Wonder how much of the “successful integration” had to do with being able to work legally without restrictions on Day 1?
The Republican party is a racist organization that ought to be electorally shoved into the dustbin of history, no argument there.
But what’s Biden’s excuse? It’s his administration that’s been making the decisions to get us to this point.
I’d say that third reason is fueling the other two. Doing anything to support southern migrants makes racist douchebags go bonkers and the Biden administration is afraid to have that fight for some reason, so they ignore the situation and now we’re here and the only ideas they have are more cops and more deterrence.
Our political leaders today are all either bigots or bigot-enabling cowards. Thank goodness we live in a democracy with rights to free speech and assembly because I don’t know how else we’re going to get those leaders to act like human beings again.
The amount likely pays a huge role.
Per the article, the US got 30k immigrants from Ukraine since the invasion started.
Per this article from September: 2.7 million in 2022, 2.8 million at that point in 2023.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/09/30/how-many-migrants-crossed-the-border-2023-mexico-venezuela-2022/70979085007/
Per this article mentions that November had an average daily crossings at 6400, and that it went up considerably in December:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/record-number-migrant-border-crossings-december-2023/
Reality is that the number of migrants crossing the US Mexico border is roughly 200-300x more than the number of Ukrainian immigrants. That’s why its hard to accommodate them.
New York got 30k, the US has accepted 271k
Also, comparing accepted asylum applications and border crossings is apples to oranges. Among other things, someone who gets picked up by CBP, gets thrown out, tries again and gets picked up again counts as two border crossings, so the fact that the border is so closed down and we’re persecuting these migrants is artificially inflating that number.
So it still goes from 200-300x the number to being 10-15x. Still an order of magnitude larger. Point still stands.
Edit: Also NYC itself was creating illegal immigration to Canada, paying for migrants arriving in NYC to be bussed up to Roxham Road and illegally cross into Canada.
