Dear New Yorkers,

“I don’t want to continue disrupting [my children’s] lives… The school has been a great help to us. They have been like angels who've swooped down from the sky.”

That’s Dayana, an asylum seeker from Colombia who's being sheltered in a Bronx hotel with her husband and two children. They fled to New York after Dayana’s husband received death threats because of his work as a community organizer back home.

Every morning, Dayana brings her 11-year-old son to public school in Manhattan – early enough so he can eat the free breakfast the school provides. Despite the nearly hour-long commute on two subway lines, the New York public school is one of the only sources of stability Dayana and her family knows.

But it could all come crashing down this week. The Adams Administration still plans to evict families with children from shelters – even though this means cruelly and needlessly displacing kids (like Dayana’s son) from the schools they’ve settled into. Dayana and her husband will be evicted from their shelter and forced to stand in line for hours at a re-take center to reapply.

Meanwhile, City Hall is doubling down with cruel rhetoric, blaming asylum seekers for everything from crime to budget cuts in a cheap attempt to deflect blame and stoke anger. But these smears are quickly disproved by the data. Spending on asylum seekers accounts for just a small portion of the out-year budget gaps we face. What we need instead is better management from the City to ensure new arrivals can quickly enter the workforce.

Ironically, the Administration is threatening to cut the exact programs that help immigrants get work authorization and jobs, so they can move out of shelter and get on their feet. This strategy makes no sense at all – economically, fiscally, or morally.

It is critical to ground conversations about immigration in facts, not fear. Amid rising xenophobia with the arrival of asylum seekers, my office published a new fact sheet to dispel prevalent myths surrounding immigration.

Let’s set the record straight on a few things...

FACT: Immigrants benefit our economy, irrespective of their status. Immigrant New Yorkers are more likely to be employed, are more likely to create jobs by starting a business, and contribute billions of dollars to our New York economy in spending power and tax revenue.

FACT: Immigrants drive workforce growth. If not for immigrants, the U.S. workforce would be shrinking. In New York City, immigrants comprise 36% of our population and 43% of our workforce. And they do not take jobs away from native-born workers.

FACT: This is not an unprecedented surge in immigration. While New York City is seeing an unprecedented number of asylum seekers relying on the City’s shelter system, the U.S. and New York City have seen periods of comparable or greater growth in our immigrant population in the past. In fact, the immigrant population has only risen marginally since 2021.

Look, New York has been a welcome harbor for generations, and the arrival of asylum seekers today is no exception. Over three million New York City residents are immigrants, comprising about 40% of our city’s population today.

Rather than shutting the door on new New Yorkers, our City, State, and federal government must work together to keep the tradition of embracing immigration. In particular, the federal government can provide more funding and flexibility in reimbursing localities for the cost of providing shelter, case management, workforce development, and legal services.

That’s how we’ll fulfill New York’s promise for all New Yorkers – including our newest New Yorkers.

With hope and compassion,

Brad