John, 

By now, you have likely already heard about our strained shelter system and how Mayor Adams wants to build a relief center at Orchard Beach to house the asylum seekers who are being used as pawns in Texas Governor Abbott’s callous busing stunts. While Abbott’s poll numbers rise among his MAGA base, New Yorkers are faced with a shelter system that has been neglected for years under multiple mayoral administrations. The Mayor’s proposed camp is not a solution but at best a temporary band-aid that is sure to cause more harm than good, especially as we head into winter. 

Since May, New York City has welcomed over 15,000 asylum seekers, but still remains under-resourced and ill-prepared to fully integrate them into our city and state. Many of the asylum seekers are fleeing violence and unstable environments in countries like Venezuela and Colombia; they have been traveling thousands of miles through South and Central America, eager to be met with a safer life in the United States than the one they left behind. 

Like all of us, all they want is to find permanent housing, steady employment, and a way to feed their families and keep them safe. New York has been welcoming immigrants for centuries and we can’t stop now. Our immigrant communities are the backbone of our city, state and country, and to ensure that we can continue to meet the needs of immigrants, we need a coordinated response from our federal, state and city governments.

What does this look like in practice? It looks like the implementation of a statewide housing voucher program to support all immigrants to find permanent housing. It looks like an expedited visa approval program to allow them to fill job vacancies and begin supporting their families more quickly. It looks like increased funding for legal services to ensure that these asylum seekers can continue to meet the requirements of their cases. It means our federal, state and city officials must develop a coordinated strategy so that our immigrant communities not only survive but thrive in New York.

Instead of treating asylum seekers as political pawns like Abbott and his counterparts, we'll welcome these new New Yorkers and work with them to help us build the New York of the future. If we do this right, we'll set a bold example for the rest of the country on how New York still is the gateway for the waves of immigrants who have built this country since its founding. 

In solidarity,

Murad Awawdeh