Morris & Binder: In the Big Apple, Globalists Risk It All for Economic Migrants

The migrant crisis in New York is upending the Empire State’s politics, as the “sanctuary” Big Apple has been flooded with over 110,000 newcomers in the last year— and now, local pols must reconcile the demands of their globalist big donors with those of their constituents.

The sanctuary city of New York City is bullying upstate towns to accept migrants as it struggles (and fails) to provide shelter and services, muscling Albany into providing work permits, and demanding Washington send more federal money, to applause from big-business interests — all while local residents are protesting the onslaught.

As the city is being flooded with migrants, Mayor Eric Adams (D) is turning hotels into makeshift and overrun shelters, recently opened a $20 million-per-month tent “mega-camp” on Randall’s Island, and transformed Floyd Bennett Airfield in Brooklyn into additional housing.

Breitbart visited the Pakistani government-owned Roosevelt Hotel, on 45th and Madison, at one time an iconic site, now a blight on the upscale neighborhood.

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Once described by New York Magazine as “breathtaking” and “lavish,” an Italian Renaissance-style building where guests feel “whisked away to a grand ball from a bygone era,” the hotel is now derelict and squalid, with dozens of people lying on the sidewalk inside makeshift metal barricades set up outside the hotel entrance.

In previous migrant encounters, Breitbart relied on Google Translate to communicate with Spanish-speaking subjects. But now, the language barrier has been broken, as the migrants camped outside the Roosevelt are French-speaking, from African nations, including Senegal, Mauritania, Guinea, and Burkina Faso. They told Breitbart’s Quebec transplant Emma-Jo Morris that they fled anything from civil war to political marginalization to lack of economic opportunity, and arrived at the United States southern border via Nicaragua, which does not require a visa for them to enter.

Scores of men who spoke to Breitbart said they had been sleeping multiple nights outside the hotel in the makeshift pen, on the ground, waiting for entry into the hotel, which the government of Pakistan leased to New York City for 3 years at $200 per room per night, according to Gulf News.

The massive housing scheme for economic migrants, paid for by New Yorkers, paints a bigger picture of what mass immigration does to housing prices and rents — somewhat of a gentrification.

It was once hipster transplants pricing out working- and lower-middle-class New Yorkers from their neighborhoods, many of whom long histories there. Today, migrants are increasingly linked to record high rents and $1.2 million homes that would fittingly cost anywhere from $250,000 to $300,000 in any other state.

Drive up demand, drive up prices. This is the motto of the suits getting rich off the fact that the more people are absorbed into American society means more people who need housing. As a result, middle class homeowners start looking to areas that won’t undergo disruption from crime, economic decline, and, in this case, waves of migrants showing up on their street corners. It’s partly why rents have continued to climb despite an exodus from New York City.

When local outlet The City questioned “Why Are NYC Rents So High?” their conclusion was “It’s complicated.” Needless to say, no mention of immigration was made in their analysis.

But when the corporate-funded media admits a truth that they’ve denied for decades, take note. In May, New York Magazine writer Eric Levitz set the record straight when he wrote that mass migration, indeed, is “bad for housing prices.” Of course, his solution, like Gov. Kathy Hochul’s (D), isn’t to stop the inflow but instead, turn it into a boon for real estate developers and Wall Street investors.

Because, if anyone needs help in our post-COVID economy, it’s BlackRock.

Meanwhile, Mayor Adams has retained a contractor called “DocGo” — on a multi-million dollar no-bid contract, according to the New York Post — to relocate migrants to quiet towns north of the city, some as far as 400 miles away, all the way up to the border with Canada. DocGo is currently facing a state investigation “amid a series of complaints that migrants have allegedly been misled and mistreated by the company while being moved upstate under a $432 million uncompetitive contract from the city,” according to the Post.

In one Schenectady County town in the Capital Region just bordering the Adirondack Mountains, residents are up in arms after a local motel was co-opted by DocGo and turned into a migrant shelter. The town, Rotterdam, New York, has approximately 22,500 residents, 94.5% of whom speak only English, with a 5% unemployment rate and a median household income of $81,185.

Rotterdam is a picturesque town with a close community, which Breitbart traveled to, about a 4-hour drive from New York City. There is a local bar — which serves burgers among the top 5 that Breitbart has had out on the road — where the bartender knows all the patrons, and all the patrons know the owner.

Breitbart spoke to the people who live there and attended a town council meeting where residents pressed their local leaders for solutions for the increased levels of panhandling and increased prices to cover medicaid and vaccinations. They also demanded the motel housing migrants be fined.

“You guys just shake your head,” one resident scolded the town board during the meeting Q&A. “The asylum seekers, they’re here. It’s not their fault that they’re here, but that shouldn’t be on the backs of taxpayers of Rotterdam,” she continued, demanding the mayor of New York City be called to the town meeting.

“This town is not sticking up for the people in Rotterdam, and I’m fed up with all this!” exclaimed another, adding that the people who were staying at the local motel were kicked out so the place could be transformed into an economic migrant shelter. “[The migrants] should be sent back to New York City!”

Speaking to Breitbart one of the townspeople explained, “My understanding is … within 24 hours, the owner of Motel 8 … told the people that are living there, you have to leave. And in the middle of the night, or late evening, 11:00, 12:00, they started bringing [the migrants] in. And the people that were living there got thrown out, with less than 24-hours’ notice. Now if you think that’s fair, ok.”

She added, “As a resident of Rotterdam, we should not be paying for school, or for health care [for the migrants]. …The mayor of New York City needs to come up here and explain his position.”

Another citizen of the “blindsided” town told Breitbart the migrants have been panhandling, loitering around people’s homes, knocking on windows, and harassing people.

“There was a complete lack of communication between the city of New York and the town of Rotterdam,” he said. “The town was completely blindsided … by busloads of migrants showing up here, basically unannounced. So the community as a whole is concerned about who they are, where they’re from, how many men, women, how many children are in that motel now.”

“They’re wandering the streets, wandering our neighborhoods, knocking on doors, peeking in windows, panhandling, going into stores and harassing customers. They need to be instructed and told how to act, what’s inappropriate, what they can and cannot do,” he continued.

Similarly, patriots in Staten Island are turning migrant buses around. They’ve been protesting for weeks with the help of Curtis Sliwa — the founder of the city’s Guardian Angels, and a local institution.

Saint John's villa Staten Island NY
Frustrated Staten Island residents chase off a bus full of migrant during a drop-off .
( This was sent in ) pic.twitter.com/kqIfRZqj8y

— Viral News NYC (@ViralNewsNYC) September 5, 2023

Rightfully, State Islanders want to know why Adams is pushing economic migrants into their community. These New Yorkers, out of millions, are among the minority that did not vote for this. They are the red island among an ocean of blue in the city, voting over 60 percent for former President Trump in 2020.

To match their outrage, though, Adams is making a veiled attack against Hochul and Biden. This week, he declared that mass migration “will destroy New York City” and that every community and every public service will be impacted as a result. Of course, these comments come with little action to actually disincentivize migrants from coming.

Adams, for instance, could end the city’s sanctuary city policy solely as a marketing strategy, which typically goes a long way with migrants. When Biden gave temporary amnesty status to over a hundred thousand Haitians in the United States who would otherwise be illegal immigrants, it was followed by a surge of Haitian illegal immigrants at the southern border even though they would not be eligible for the protected status. That’s how the Mexican drug cartels operate: sell half-truths to vulnerable people across the world, hook them on a fictitious dream, take everything from them, get them into America, and leave them indebted to traffickers for years to come.

Hochul is practically begging more to come to New York from the border with her plans for a federal bailout offering free housing, healthcare, public transit, and jobs to economic migrants. According to her, their inflow is a win-win for corporate special interests— a sentiment echoed by New York “pro-worker” Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

“New York State has been working with the City of New York to manage the arrival of a significant number of migrants and individuals seeking asylum in New York over the past year,” Hochul wrote in a letter to Biden late last month. She then listed “key steps that the federal government must take to meet its responsibilities to New York,” including expediting work authorizations and financial assistance for health care and human services, transportation, housing and education.

“There are not enough workers here in the state of New York,” Hochul said this summer. “This is something that is … affecting us with this historic labor shortage. But at the same time … we also have this unprecedented influx of individuals arriving in New York … they’re eager to work, they want to work, they came here in search of work, for a new future.”

“[President Joe] Biden administration’s refusal to open up work authorizations or extend temporary protective status [Temporary Protected Status, or TPS] really prevents us from doing what we do best, which is allowing and creating an environment where immigrants from all over the world can create a livelihood here,” AOC echoed in a remark to a journalist from the New York Times.

And, surprise, the bailout is backed by her business donors looking for big payouts. The nation’s biggest banks on Wall Street, investment firms, and pharmaceutical companies are among a number of multinational corporations throwing their support behind the plan from Hochul, which would have American taxpayers bail out the “sanctuary state” for the migration influx.

What about backlash from New Yorkers, you ask? Well, that’s a risk she’ll take.

Emma-Jo Morris is the Politics Editor at Breitbart News. Email her at ejmorris@breitbart.com or follow her on Twitter.