Democratic cities that welcomed migrants are starting to roll back aid

When a wave of migrants began arriving in Democratic-run cities far from the Southern border two years ago, officials welcomed them with open arms. Now they’re limiting aid to new arrivals as their instinct for compassion confronts hard budgetary realities. In recent days, New York and Chicago — two of the nation’s largest cities — have instituted substantial changes to their shelter policies. In Chicago, the city began evicting migrants who had overstayed a new 60-day time limit, saying it did not have the resources to meet the need. In New York, migrants had benefited from the city’s unique right to shelter, which guarantees emergency housing for as long as anyone needs it. Last Friday, those rules were significantly altered for migrants without children, the culmination of a months-long struggle by the city to curtail its legal obligations to new arrivals as their number surpassed 180,000 and the cost of shelter soared. Similar dynamics are unfolding elsewhere: In Denver, officials began closing some migrant shelters in recent weeks and reinstated time limits for stays. In Massachusetts, which has also seen an influx of migrants, the legislature is moving toward instituting a cap on how long people can stay in shelters. For deep-blue cities with long histories of embracing immigrants, the latest influx of newcomers — many of them seeking asylum — has produced a sometimes-painful reckoning with their stated values. The impulse to welcome new arrivals is “deep-rooted, but it’s expensive,” particularly in cities with steep housing costs, said Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute. Cities rapidly learned that the current wave of migrants — some of them traveling on buses paid for by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) but many finding their own way — is of a different order, Chishti said. For instance, New York Mayor Eric Adams (D) initially cast himself as the “anti-Abbott,” Chishti said, but his rhetoric shifted dramatically as the number of arrivals skyrocketed, along with the costs of helping them.“This is where you would say that the politics of the Democratic Party were changed by this chapter in U. S. migration history,” Chishti said. Democratic-run cities and states have begged for more help from the federal government, including pushing for a legislative deal to overhaul the immigration system. In January, nine Democratic governors wrote to President Biden that cities and states “cannot indefinitely respond” to the influx without congressional action. But the issue remains caught in a political impasse in Washington, even as immigration has emerged as a top issue in the presidential campaign. Cities have warned that the budgetary strains caused by the migrant influx would oblige them to cut services. New York has already implemented some budget cuts, including to spending on migrants, but is still set to spend more than $4 billion on the crisis in the current fiscal year, a city official testified in February.


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