Why The Migrant Crisis Has Sent NYC to its Breaking Point

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, INTERNATIONAL HOST: Now, as we heard with the government shutdown looming, the capacity to process this influx at the southern border is causing concern.
The mayor of the border town, Eagle Pass, is extending the city’s emergency disaster declaration as thousands cross into Texas. Muzaffar Chishti is a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, and he joins Hari Sreenivasan to discuss what to do next.

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HARI SREENIVASAN, INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Christiane, thanks. Muzaffar Chishti, thanks so much for joining us. Just recently, we had the Biden administration announce TPS, Temporary Protection Status, to hundreds of thousands of people who had come across our border from Venezuela before August. What does TPS mean for all of these individuals?

MUZAFFAR CHISHTI, SENIOR FELLOW, MIGRATION POLICY INSTITUTE: Temporary Protective Status is a provision of a law originally written in 1990, which allows the U.S. to suspend the deportation and provide work authorization to nationals of a country that we have designated as unsafe for people to go to. It’s typically meant for critical turmoil, climate crises, earthquakes and has been used a number of times since 1990. This is the most recent iteration of that. I mean, Venezuela is a very unique situation in the migration flow. We have about 7.2 million Venezuelans who have left the country since the critical crisis there. And they have mostly actually gone, to the credit of those countries, to about 16 Caribbean and Central and South American countries. After COVID hit, which took a big economic toll on many of those countries, they started migrating to the U.S. So, it’s a more recent crisis for the U.S., but it is a big crisis. So, under this, people who are already in the United States will be given the protection. The idea by having a cutoff (INAUDIBLE) is that it should not provide incentives for more people to come because this doesn’t guarantee those people to be covered.

SREENIVASAN: Right. Does that work though? Right now, we are hearing reports that there are thousands more people basically trying to get through the Darien Gap, this area kind of north of Panama, to come into Mexico and onward to the United States. Is that signal getting sent loud and clear? Because what they are also hearing, at the same time, while they might hear about a gap is, wow, thousands and thousands of Venezuelans just got this protective status. So, maybe there will be another protective status for me if there is a new deadline, say, September or October?

CHISHTI: You’re right. I mean, this is the dilemma the administration faces. They have tried to create carrots and sticks in migration policies throughout the Biden administration. So, they actually allowed Venezuelans to come to another program, it’s called the Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan and Venezuela parole program. That if you are sponsored by a U.S. citizen, you can actually come directly fly into the U.S. on a parole. So, there are those pathways available. I think the administration is trying to incentivize them to use those pathways as against coming unlawfully between ports of entry. That’s part of the incentive here. But ultimately, you are right that the effectiveness while that stake is going to be determined by how robust our enforcement is. And more importantly, which people don’t understand enough is that how cooperative Mexico is going to be. Because if you’re going to return people, they’re going to go to Mexico. And if Mexico doesn’t allow them back, then we have a big problem. And so, I think the negotiations with Mexico are in high gear. And then, unfortunate (ph) measures will decide how effective the deterrent is.

SREENIVASAN: So, tell me a little bit about — I guess to take a step back, what qualifies as an asylum seeker? Because we have thousands of people showing up at the southern border asking for asylum. You know, the Senate will say, well, they have been coached to say that, and the person who wants to hear their plight will say, they are actually running in fear for their lives. But what is it, you know, technically that qualifies within the category of what an asylum is for the United States?

CHISHTI: To be sure, the Venezuelan TPS is different from the asylum. The asylum is a route for people to come. But you are right, asylum is generally the default mechanism through which people who don’t have authorization to come to the United States enter. And some people rightly say that have — they go and invoke asylum. In that regard, our border today is totally different than it was even 10 years ago. The border challenge in the past was about single Mexican males sneaking through the border looking for work. Now, we have large number of people from countries all over the world with families who come and seek asylum. Now, asylum is our commitment both on the international law and national law, which means that we can’t remove a person who claims that they are in fear of facing persecution. But those persecution grounds are very narrow. They are to be on the basis of your race, religion, social group, political opinion. And I think that’s where, I think, our problem is, that our asylum system is broken. It just is backlogged. It’s about — it takes years for people to get their process claimed and their claim processed. So, that means that people who actually deserve it don’t get it for a long time. And people who don’t deserve it are clogging the system, which then becomes the pull factor for people to come. So, we really have to address the asylum system, make it more efficient and fair at the same time.

SREENIVASAN: You know, the asylum system in specific and then even more broadly how we process individuals that are trying to gain access to the United States, this has been a problem for decades now. But what has been – – if there is a way to summarize how the Biden administration has approached immigration and this challenge, what has that been?

CHISHTI: I would say the Biden administration has try to established incentives and disincentives. Biden administration decided to define the voter crisis as one of optics, that this is the specter of hordes of people in a mismanaged way, trying to enter the U.S. just did not look good on television cameras. And so, they tried to create more order to the system. In the process, what has happened is that they have allowed a large number of people to come in an orderly way, which then has downstream effect on cities and states, that’s what we have seen exhibited in the last year or so. So, I think they, at some point, were on the right track, that we really have to allow people to come in an orderly way. They have tried to establish this CBP app One through which people can get appointments. But then I think there are — that have tried to disincentivize people to come between ports of entry. Unfortunately, the numbers are so high that even between ports of entry, we are now letting in about 30 percent (ph) people who have arrived there. So, we have to really get the asylum system going in a robust way so that we screen people at the border and letting people to process their application inside the U.S., not before a clogged immigration court system, but before asylum officers who are citizens of the USCIS, and that process could take months as again CS (ph), and that’s worth trying.

SREENIVASAN: So, I’m sitting during this conversation in New York City, and New York is facing a tremendous crush of human beings that are using resources. The city’s mayor, Eric Adams, has had to, you know, walk back comments, expressing some his frustrations before. Give us an idea of what it’s doing to a place like New York or even another major city in the United States where there are a lot of Venezuelans or migrants that find their way here?

CHISHTI: So, that’s the question on a lot of people’s minds, that why did this present chapter of migration to a place like New York become so different than it has in the past? 100,000 migrants will come to New York City in the last 16 months. 100,000 people in a city of 8 million, which has a huge history of accepting immigrants and celebrating them is not a large number. What made this chapter different is that they came in the visible, targeted, concentrated way initially driven by political module by southern governance. And then, we realize that New York City has this consent decree from 1981 which provides housing for everyone as a matter of right. Now, that has never happened in our history before. Immigrants who would come, they have organically integrated into the social fiber and economy of the city. This — and they are generally seen as a net benefit, almost all benefit and no cost, because they provide their labor, they provide tax contributions and they take very little in public benefits. In this case, it became a drain on the public benefits because of housing. And New York is one of the world’s most expensive housing markets. So, it became — you know, New York City mayor says, we are going to spend about $12 billion in the next three years, and that is a very large ticket. And that’s sort of what has gotten people concerned about it.

SREENIVASAN: So, where should that financial burden lie? I mean, the city’s mayor, the governor of the state both understand the benefits that these human beings provide to the economy. But at the same time, $12 billion doesn’t materialize out of thin air. And I can see the people of the city or the state saying, wait a minute, I don’t want to foot part of that bill.

CHISHTI: Yes. I think there are two policy things that one must address from here. One is, as I said about the asylum reform, that’s critical. I think that will probably affect flows. But in New York City, we are, I think, stuck with the consent decree of 1981, which I believe is not — I’m not a housing expert. I’m an immigration expert. So, take this with a little bit of a grain of salt. I don’t think that decree was meant for this population. That lawsuit was brought by homeless men in (INAUDIBLE) who were dying from frostbite. So, it is clear that people do not have the same rights as the intended population of the decree was.

SREENIVASAN: Yes.

CHISHTI: So, people should not get easy access to city shelter. They should integrate through family networks, familial and social networks on their villages and countries of origin.

SREENIVASAN: Sure.

CHISHTI: That people historically have relied on.

SREENIVASAN: Do you see the steps that the Biden administration has taken to extend Temporary Protected Status to Venezuelans using any of those pressures on, say, the City of New York? Because at this point, these folks will not have to live in the shadows or live in the shelters and they perhaps will be allowed to gainfully employ themselves and become, I guess, the city is opening — hoping that they are less of a burden on the city?

CHISHTI: Yes. That’s the second, I think, policy issue the administration should focus on. I think, here, the Biden administration was slow to act. They should have realized this is not another chapter of American immigration history. That this is a crisis. And we should have treated it like the way we treat a refugee crisis. That look, when refugees come to our country, the federal government decides where they go. We decide to send people where either they have families or they have — which are places where they can get easily integrated or where the housing market is low. And I think the federal government should say at the border, if we’re going to treat these people, we’re going to process them at the border. And at the border, the federal government is going to decide which states and which cities they go to. Once the federal government decides, it is going to be, you know, not to New York City, it’s not going to be San Francisco, it’s going to places where the housing market is not as expensive and where there are more job opportunities. I think if we do that, then it will be a coordinated federal response and New York City will not have to bear the burden that it does.

SREENIVASAN: When we look at places, for example, where most of the migrants are coming into the United States. Texas bears an enormous amount of that strain. There are states of emergency that have been declared in several towns across Texas. Now, how much of that is political versus practical, it can be debated. But there’s no doubt that that’s the giant port of entry, the giant land border where this crossing is happening. And I wonder because of that and the actions of Governor Abbott from Texas, the accelerated political nature of this conversation, is this a situation now where Governor Abbott, by will of his actions over the past year and a half, is winning that argument against a Kathy Hochul of New York or an Eric Adams?

CHISHTI: I think Governor Hochul actually admitted the last week herself that he had won the argument. I think he did find the opening salvoes (ph) here and he has almost had the last word. And I think it might have been politically motivated initially, but he did strike the message that this is a crisis. And I think the federal government, instead of treating this like a Republican or it’s a Democrat, border cities versus inside blue cities, the president, as I said earlier, should have convened. If not all 50 governors, at least the governors of impacted states. And look, we are in a different place. Let’s do this together. We’re not — this is not going to be a food fight. And then, allocated federal resources to make it happen so that this would become a collective responsibility as against the responsibility of only southern states, which are impacted in the initial stages of migration and New York, which are impacted when — as a destination state. We didn’t do it. The administration has had difficulty even calling it a crisis. And that itself is a bit of a problem. Because if you don’t use (ph) the vocabulary, how will you agree on a solution?

SREENIVASAN: Was there something that the border towns in Texas can do, the localities in Texas can do differently to deal with what they are facing?

CHISHTI: I think, right now, the localities in Texas — Texas was always a receptacle just because where the boundary is. They don’t — most of them don’t stay in Texas.

SREENIVASAN: Right.

CHISHTI: So, there’s — the impact on Texas is shorter, but it can be severe for a small town. That is why, I think, the pressure should be let off these reception cities. And federal government should establish reception centers all across the border in our opinion. They should be run like campuses, which is all of government, all agencies from DHS to even Department of Defense to HSS, which processes kids. And in those campuses, you should have legal service providers so that it looks like all government plus private sector response. If we do it, then we can have reasonably good housing for people when they come soon after here and a good policy to resettle them wherever we think is the most appropriate for them to go. If they have a family connection, that’s where they go first. If they don’t have a family connection, then federal government in those reception centers decides where they should be headed.

SREENIVASAN: You know, it sounds theoretically like it should work. And this is all sort of assuming that we have some semblance of an orderly process. I mean, recently, “The Wall Street Journal” estimated another 130,000 people were crossing through the Darien Gap. That means that that surge is coming to the United States. What do you do? How many possible sort of information takers do you have at the border to be able to process just this sheer volume of human beings?

CHISHTI: Yes. I mean, none of this should be under the impression that this is not a big crisis. I mean, I think that’s I think acknowledging that this is a big crisis helps. So, you get Mexico involved in a much different way in people coming from south of Mexico to north of Mexico. I mean, part of this is Mexico’s issue. I mean, people are coming through Mexico. Then you’d really do engage people — countries in the region to say, look, if people are truly fleeing persecution or conditions of safety, that’s a collective responsibility. So, it’s not one magic bullet that’s going to do it. You have — we have to do it in a big way and in a very concerted way where diplomacy helps. But I think most importantly, Congress has been absent in this. I mean, members of Congress, especially in the Republican Party, are busy using the narrative of the border crisis as a political slogan, but they would not lift a finger in improving more appropriations for border patrol or for the USCIS asylum officers. We need tons more asylum officers. We need tons (INAUDIBLE) more judges. They are as important to this fight as we have troops at the border. And you need detention facilities. You need these processing centers now to be established at a war footing, that needs money. And of the scale of money that only Congress can appropriate. And if they stop using it as a political ploy and finding actually preventive solutions, we might get to a different place.

SREENIVASAN: Senior fellow from the Migration Policy Institute Muzaffar Chishti, thanks so much for joining us.

CHISHTI: Thanks so much for having me.