Nearly 3K migrants in NYC have finally been cleared to work by feds
Finally, least a few migrants are ready to start searching Monster.com.
After months of insisting that the best way out of the migrant crisis is getting the asylum seekers to work, the Adams administration announced Tuesday that 2,850 have at long last been granted employment authorization by the federal government.
The number is just a fraction of the 9,000 have have applied to work so far, and a drop in the bucket of the some 42,000 working-age migrants who have been sheltered by New York City since the summer.
Still, the mayor hailed the number as a positive step forward.
“We need to move fast,” Mayor Eric Adams said during his weekly off-topic press conference, urging the feds to speed up the process. “That is the top of the agenda.”
“We have thousands of jobs available,” he said, adding, “We need to make sure we allow people to fill those jobs.”
The new tally comes just hours after City Hall announced the expansion of its asylum seeker application center and the opening of two satellite offices in Harlem and Lower Manhattan with the backing of state funds.
The center opened in June and has since filed, along with the help of the feds and non-profits, about 16,000 applications for asylum, work authorizations and temporary protective status.
With protective status, migrants are allowed to work once approved, which takes a few weeks, instead of having to wait more than six months under the normal asylum process.
Roughly 15,000 Venezuelans were eligible to immediately apply to start collecting a paycheck in September after President Biden extended their protective stunts, but the government, at all levels, has been slow to get them to work legally.
“We continue to do our part as a city, and we thank the federal government for their support with work authorizations — but more federal support is needed to help asylum seekers transition more quickly to independence,” Deputy Mayor Anne Williams-Isolm said.
The Adams administration has repeatedly pushed for the asylum seekers in its care to get fast-tracked work authorizations in what they say is the quickest way to relieve the city of the financial burden of paying to house and feed the migrants.
The city is currently caring for more than 66,000 asylum seekers across more than 200 shelter sites with thousands more arriving each week. In the week between Nov. 20 and Nov. 26 some 2,600 entered the city shelter system, officials said Tuesday.
More than 140,000 migrants have come through New York City since the start of the crisis in spring 2022.
