Fix the migrant asylum process — we need those workers

Let’s face it. States and localities, like it or not, have no choice but to shoulder much of the burden of accommodating the many people who recently arrived as asylum-seekers.

There were more than 2.7 million illegal crossings by immigrants at the nation’s southwest border last year — an annual record, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection figures. Of that total, some 36,000 have come to New York City since the spring, mostly from Latin America, and about 24,000 have stayed, local officials report.

A few days ago, just outside the patrolled security gate of the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal, a temporary facility housing about 1,000 male migrants, one could see visual symbols of New Yorkers’ conflicted civic instincts.

A fence at the entrance was festooned with sweet handwritten signs saying “Bienvenidos” and “Bienvenue.” But on a lamppost outside a nearby bodega, a partially ripped flyer proclaimed, “Shut down Mayor Adams’ immigrant detention center.” Sentiments of neighborhood residents aside, some migrants objected to leaving Manhattan. To defend the waterfront shelter as acceptable and safe, Adams this month made a dramatic point of sleeping overnight there.

This facility is a small cog in a large but inadequate settlement apparatus. It’s frustrating. For some time, New York City and the region have struggled with the laudable goal of serving people with big needs. Affordable housing is scarce. Homelessness is chronic. Shelters are jammed.

Then comes this migrant influx.

FEW ANSWERS IN WASHINGTON

But waiting for elected officials in Washington to provide answers is futile — even if there is some hopeful talk of agreement on bipartisan immigration reforms.

The city recently began giving migrants bus tickets to our northern border. There was some practical logic to this. People with work skills have been able to get employment permits in Canada more quickly than in the U.S.

Busing people haphazardly from the city, however, is no solution. With irregular crossings from this state into Canada soaring, Quebec officials are preparing to shut that migrant pipeline. Meanwhile, growing numbers of Mexicans now go to Canada to try to cross illegally into the U.S.

New York policymakers will need to look at the entire state for other reliable staging areas — perhaps national air bases and other federal properties, unused factories, or other large structures. Even the Nassau Coliseum site has been mentioned by its leaseholder, although a formal bid for a city contract has not yet been filed.

Albany and Washington have extended some help. In December, the federal government approved $800 million in grants for states, local governments, and nongovernmental organizations dealing with the human surge. Gov. Kathy Hochul’s administration has been deploying hundreds of New York National Guard soldiers downstate to help, too. While Hochul touted a $1 billion commitment in her executive budget proposal for migrant sheltering and services, sources and uses for that money have yet to be worked out.

In the meantime, a separate but related problem demands solutions — employment that will let asylum-seekers support themselves.

HELP WANTED

At a moment of impressively low unemployment and high job vacancies, people of little or no means are coming in any way they can. For private businesses, they offer a desirable potential labor pool.

Unfortunately, refugees to the U.S. must wait 180 days after applying for asylum to be authorized for hiring. That leaves them unable to earn their keep for those six months — eager as they are to do so — while waiting to see whether their asylum status is approved.

The moment is opportune but may not last. Jobs are available more quickly, with better pay and working conditions, than before. Hourly workers are harder to find, and there aren’t enough seasonal work visas to help fill those jobs.

So it seems only sensible for the system to adjust in a hurry — to serve both employers and newcomer employees by getting people hired faster.

Since late 2020, some 2.6 million migrants have reportedly been allowed to stay here after entering without documentation and asking for asylum. They were given Social Security numbers and work permits valid for as long as it takes their immigration cases to be decided — which can take five years or more.

More than ever, the process needs to be unclogged and accelerated.

The same is true for refugees, another potential source of labor. By international law, refugees are those fleeing persecution or conflict in their home country.

Hopes are high that the State Department’s new expansion of refugee sponsorships will include private groups and individuals. For years, sponsorship has been restricted to the usual nonprofit settlement organizations. Perhaps this step, currently a pilot program called the “Welcome Corps,” can help clear blockages in the stream of refugees.

Matching solutions to needs in this region is hard but not impossible. Paper processing, shelter, sponsoring, screening and employment of migrants — and better order at both borders — all require the kind of detail work, operational efficiency, and long attention span that governments find hard to muster.

But officials must meet the challenges, region by region. The complex tasks stemming from this migrant wave will bear on nothing less than the whole nation’s future.