By: Hellen Zaboulani

New York is bearing the brunt of the flood of migrants streaming into the country from the Southern borders.  In the past year, more than 100,000 asylum seekers have entered New York, leading to the migrant crisis, and leaving the state and city governments scrambling to provide them with shelter and services.

As reported by the NY Post, NYS has already spent a whopping $2 billion on the migrant crisis.  On Monday, Gov. Kathy Hochul said that this massive spending is “unsustainable” and cannot continue forever.  The $2 billion price tag, includes $1.5 billion that went directly to NYC to help it manage the new arrivals in recent months.  It also includes roughly $358 million meant to cover the rental and service costs at the newly opened encampment shelter at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, case management costs and disease screenings and immunizations, as per a memorandum from the state’s budget division released Saturday.

“We’ve already spent far more than we anticipated,” Hochul told reporters on Monday.  The state budget had allocated just half the spending, or $1 billion, for migrant funding.  “Since we’re paying almost half of the cost of housing already, as well as the case management, legal services for helping people seek asylum, building up the infrastructure for jobs, we’re approaching $2 billion already this year,” said the Democratic governor.  “So that’s $1 billion more than we anticipated. I’m just sending out the alert, as our budget director said, that that rate is unsustainable,” she added.

Per the NY Post, Saturday’s budget memo, sent by state budget division head Blake Washington, said that the migrant crisis has quickly become one of the biggest threats to the NYS’s finances.  Before the end of the fiscal year, the state will be on the hook to close a troubling $4.3 billion budget gap, Washington wrote.  “With the continued influx of migrants, no promises of financial support from the Federal government, and no clear pathway to a wholesale policy change at the Federal level to address the situation, New York State can only shoulder this financial commitment for a limited duration without putting other areas of the State budget at risk,” Washington said.

If it remains unchecked, this will force budget cuts on every aspect of the state’s funding including schools, health and the National Guard.  The budget director’s memo suggested that the state can’t continue paying for migrants’ hotel rooms indefinitely, but should rather limit assistance to what he called “targeted interventions”– which would include legal services, case management and helping migrants to find jobs.  “New York’s ability to pay for these programs is not unlimited,”  the memo said.

On Monday, Gov. Hochul seemed to be on the same page as the budget director saying, “We cannot continue to be paying for unlimited hotel rooms for people.”  The governor also said she supports NYC Mayor Eric Adams’ attempts to let people know that the city has reached its capacity.  Both Hochul and Adams have been asking the White House to step in with aid, saying this is a federal issue. The governor said Monday that her statements are in line with an attempt to manage expectations.  “I also have to manage an entire budget that funds education, health care, child care and other services that New Yorkers want to make sure are not cut,” Hochul said.