Seeking new playbook, Democrats sour on Mayor Adams' migrant approach

As Mayor Eric Adams doubles down on his criticism of the Biden administration over New York City’s ongoing migrant crisis, other city leaders are shifting their approach in recent weeks, focusing on moonshot ideas — and they’re gaining momentum.

Adams sparked a firestorm last week by describing the ongoing flow of migrant and asylum-seekers as an intractable problem that would “destroy New York City.” But behind the scenes, other Democrats have been focusing on ways to bring some of the newcomers into the workforce, a once improbable notion that’s picking up steam this week as a viable antidote to Adams’ austerity-minded budget cuts.

Over Labor Day weekend, state Sen. Zellnor Myrie, a Democrat who represents portions of the same Brooklyn district once represented by Adams when he served in the state Senate, proposed that the city launch its own work permit program aimed at asylum-seekers and city residents alike.

Myrie's idea has taken off in the roughly two weeks since he pitched it in a Daily News editorial.

On Tuesday, Gov. Kathy Hochul said conversations with legislative leaders about granting work authorizations at the state level are in the works, pending federal approval. Multiple state lawmakers and a new city think tank, the 5Boro Institute, have also offered variations of work permit ideas through state legislation and city initiatives.

Although state or city policies granting migrants work authorization would likely face legal challenges, the discourse among some New York policymakers about how to address the arrival of some 110,000 migrants is changing after a year of finger-pointing, as an existential crisis is reframed as an untapped opportunity.

Political observers and lawmakers alike said it’s time to try a different approach, and are throwing whatever they can at the wall and seeing what sticks.

“One can only hold so many press conferences calling on the federal government to do something that they are not going to do,” Myrie told Gothamist. “In the interim, we have not applied any creative solutions and we continue to point the finger.”

Myrie, a first generation Afro-Latino New Yorker and son of immigrants from Costa Rica, stressed that it was vital for city leaders to push back against rhetoric aimed at scaring New Yorkers and offer more creative solutions that would allow the city to embrace the migrants' arrival as a way to address other city needs.

His idea, “WorkNYC,” is an indisputable nod to another city-led initiative from the previous de Blasio administration: “IDNYC,” the city’s municipal identification card, which was also designed to serve as identification that would allow people to access banking and apply for city services regardless of their immigration status.

Myrie told Gothamist that his proposal for a city work permit program would connect jobseekers with those looking for workers — including new arrivals and those already living here. He likened it to how the city already provides New Yorkers with health care at city hospitals and education at public schools regardless of their immigration status.

“We can do two things at the same time: We can advocate for help from the feds and from the state, and we can also put people to work right now,” Myrie said.

“The politics and lack of leadership has muddled this,” he added.

'He does not have to do it alone'

While the mayor and his allies have gone on the defensive in recent weeks, blaming the Biden administration for not providing the city with more resources to care for tens of thousands of people and threatening major budget cuts to city services, the narrative around Adams' handling of the situation is beginning to shift.

“The playbook we’ve been using for more than a year on the migrant crisis isn’t working,” said Grace Rauh, executive director of the 5Boro Institute, a nonpartisan public policy think tank.

Rauh suggested that Adams bring the same level of ingenuity as Gavin Newsom, the current California governor who became a national figure in 2004 by defying California state law and issuing marriage licenses to gay couples in San Francisco while he was that city's mayor.

“It sent a powerful message to the country that this is the right thing to do,” said Rauh. “I think that’s a great example of a mayor stepping up.”

While Rauh said her organization fully supports additional efforts to address the migrant crisis at the federal and state level, she added that there is untapped potential for finding interim solutions here in the city.

“If the state can't get it done, we think the mayor needs to step up here and figure out a path forward,” she added.

Basil Smikle, a professor and director of Hunter College's public policy program and the former head of the state’s Democratic Party, said now is the time for Adams to harness the power and influence of his office.

“In addition to the large bureaucracy that the mayor runs, he has an extraordinary amount of power, and he has to use that power to bring people to the table to help him solve this problem,” Smikle told Gothamist.

“He does not have to do it alone. And that is really the difference between leading and not leading,” he added.

A spokesperson for City Hall stressed that the administration has been working to manage a growing humanitarian crisis with seemingly little support from the federal government.

“Time and time again, asylum-seekers have told us about the arduous journeys they made here in pursuit of the American dream, which is why Mayor Adams has called on the federal government to expedite work authorizations and ‘Let Them Work,” said Kayla Mamelak, a spokesperson for the mayor.

“With little action from the federal government on this issue, we are grateful to the policymakers who are looking for creative solutions to this crisis and will support the work that will actually help asylum-seekers achieve the independence they are seeking,” she added.

Migrant vibe shift

As Adams continues to pressure Washington to act, other lawmakers are entertaining ideas like Myrie’s, or ways to shorten the wait for a working permit.

Under current law, asylum-seekers must wait 180 days after filing their asylum application before they are able to secure work permits. However, this timeline generally stretches far longer due to processing backlogs.

But despite the potential legal headaches, Myrie’s idea of creating a more local work authorization program is emerging as an increasingly popular solution that even the governor is entertaining.

Hochul told reporters on Tuesday that local work authorization would be “unprecedented,” but did not shut the door on the idea, which she said her office is discussing internally as well as with legislative leaders and federal officials.

During a background briefing on Tuesday, senior Biden administration officials said work permits remain within the federal government’s purview.

Still, Anne Williams-Isom, the deputy mayor for health and human services, said on Wednesday that she was excited to hear the governor talk about local work authorizations, and described it as “something that we have on our list of innovative things to do.”

“I think that finding a way to do that in the absence of the federal government doing that would be very important,” she added.

The calculus is simple for Myrie: If the federal government attempts to block something like his WorkNYC program and instead chooses to enforce immigration laws without providing the resources needed to support new arrivals, “then we’ll see them in court.”

But granting municipal work permits isn't the only proposal making rounds.

Assemblymember Catalina Cruz and state Sen. Luis Sepúlveda, both of whom are New York City Democrats, plan to introduce legislation that would shorten the wait for work permits from 180 days to 45 days for asylum-seekers. Assemblymember Jenifer Rajkumar, a staunch ally of the mayor in Albany, told the Capitol Pressroom that she also intends to introduce similar legislation.

But while many of these ideas seem novel, other proposals to bring new arrivals into the workforce have been circulating for years.

State Sen. Jessica Ramos, who blasted Adams’ comments about new arrivals on social media and during an appearance on MSNBC on Monday, said she has been carrying a bill since 2020 that would prohibit employers from using the federal electronic verification system to check an individual’s immigration and work authorization status.

A similar law is currently in place in Illinois.

“That’s literally the only program that stands in the way of day laborers joining the building trades. Illinois did away with the mandate, and we can do it, too,” Ramos told Gothamist.