I don't see an ending to this.
This issue will destroy New York City.
Destroy New York City.
We're getting 10,000 migrants a month.
Every community in this city is going to be impacted.
The city we knew, we're about to lose.
>> Speaker 2: You just heard from a Democratic mayor.
That was Eric Adams, the mayor of New York City,
essentially complaining about the tens of thousands of migrants
that have arrived in Manhattan in recent months.
In fact, the number currently sits at a total of 110,000.
And the migrants obviously need a place to stay, they need services.
And the current social safety net programs in New York
specifically are beginning to buckle.
There's a lot of frustration, a lot of anger.
And while Mayor Eric Adams is complaining and also pointing his finger at Joe Biden
and the federal government, it's important to know he's not the only one.
Here's the Governor of New York, Kathy Hochul.
>> Speaker 3: The state has deployed enormous resources toward
New York City's valiant efforts to shelter and
support these nearly 100,000 migrants who have already arrived here.
The reality is we've managed thus far without substantive support
from Washington and despite the fact that this is a national,
indeed a inherently federal issue.
But New York has shouldered this burden for far too long.
This crisis originated with the federal government, and
it must be resolved through the federal government.
The borders and
decisions about who can work are solely determined by the federal government.
>> Speaker 2: Now, say what you will about Kathy Hochul,
the very last part of that statement was absolutely correct.
It's just true.
This is an issue that is dealt with on a federal level.
And right now, states are dealing with basically the brunt of a very real crisis.
Now we're going to get to Texas Governor Greg Abbott's role in all of this because
it actually has been overestimated in the press, and
the reality is a little more complicated than that.
But before we do, I want to give you a sense of what
the people living in New York City are feeling about this issue.
Let's watch.
>> Speaker 4: There is consensus here across geography and states on increased
federal resources to cities and municipalities dealing with this issue.
The second is to allow for work authorization so that folks in here can
get to work and start supporting themselves as soon as possible.
They are prevented from getting jobs.
They are prevented from employment.
And that is part of the strain on our public system.
The faster that folks can access the work that they're asking for legally,
the better we can solve this problem.
And the third is extension of temporary protected status for
Venezuelans who are the largest populations that are arriving here.
>> Speaker 2: So there you have Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
attempting to address the issue as a sitting United States Congresswoman.
And she is calling for something that I think most Democrats in the state of
New York are calling for, which is let's expedite their workers' visas so
these individuals can be self sufficient, they can work,
they can contribute to the economy.
But the Biden administration has actually been pretty resistant to that allegedly
because they fear that expediting these workers' visas would actually
encourage more migrants to attempt to come to the United States as asylum seekers.
And when you hear the protests in the background as AOC is trying to speak,
understand.
Look I know that it's very easy to kind of brush them off as hateful people.
But when you're already experiencing a lack of resources for your own community,
for your own schools, you can understand where that rage kind of comes from.
And I want to give you a quick sense of what I'm talking about.
One more video and then we'll open it up to discussion.
>> On opening day, kids rushing into the largest school system in the country and
it just got even bigger.
With 21,000 new children of asylum seekers also starting classes today in New York.
Mayor Eric Adams is frustrated with a steady wave of migrants.
He says the city is overwhelmed with 10,000 arriving a month,
straining city services and creating a desperate need for help from Washington.
The schools face the growing task of providing academic resources,
supplies, a more diverse staff, many do not have bilingual programs.
>> Speaker 2: Last year went from 20 kids to almost 30 kids in a classroom.
>> Speaker 5: It's going to make it tough,
[INAUDIBLE] somebody's got to solve these problems.
>> Speaker 2: So this is a very real problem.
It is in fact a crisis.
As I said, I'll get to the Texas Governor's role in this and
how it actually has been overestimated quite a bit.
But before I do, I'm really curious what you think so far Cenk,
about what places like New York and Chicago are dealing with and
how they claim there's been a lack of a response from the federal government.
>> Speaker 6: Yeah, so look, I said this on day one, I'm going to repeat it even
with greater fervor today, I think that what Texas did makes sense.
And so I know that a lot of people on the left don't wanna hear that.
But think about it guys.
So they had this immigration problem all along and
it wasn't spread out to many different states.
It was just in Texas and of course other border states.
And the federal government kept saying I don't care, okay?
Now to be fair, the federal government,
it doesn't just quite say that it has a lot of different programs in place.
The idea that there's open borders is nonsense.
No, there's a border and they enforce it.
They return people all the time, etc.
But tons of people come in and the border states said, why?
Why do we have to shoulder all of this by ourselves?
And started shipping it to other places that were more left wing and
said they were more open to immigrants.
So you're open to immigrants.
Here you go. Here's immigrants.
And now all of a sudden, New York realizes, okay,
well, being open to immigrants has consequences, right?
And they're trying to adjust the best they can, and
they're trying to be as welcoming as they can.
But obviously some anger is building.
And so why does Texas have to just deal with it?
We all should deal with it.
And it's, of course, a federal issue.
And so they're not welcoming of immigrants, I am.
But that doesn't mean that we have to make New Mexico, Texas, and
Arizona deal with the whole thing.
>> Speaker 2: Agreed.
>> Speaker 6: No, it means that we all are responsible for our brothers and
sisters that are both the immigrants and the New Yorkers and the Texans, etc.
So now to give you a scope of the scale here, there's different reasons for
different parts of the immigration puzzle.
There's folks coming in from Africa now as well.
But Venezuela is an interesting example.
Just a bunch of years ago, around 2018 or so, not that long ago,
there's only 100 Venezuelans that had come into the country in the year.
Now that number is up to 150,000.
150,000, okay?
Now, Venezuela has giant problems in and of itself, right?
But it gives you a sense of scale.
So it is very difficult to figure out where to put these folks.
How do you get them jobs?
Now, I didn't know this until recently, asylum seeking, of course,
takes a little while, everybody knows that.
But it turns out the process normally takes three to four years.
>> Speaker 2: Correct, yeah.
>> Speaker 6: So what are you supposed to do in the three to four years?
Well, that's why they're asking for those work authorizations.
Both AOC, Eric Adams, an interesting note here,
Eric Adams is generally a conservative Democrat,
Kathy Hochul generally a corporate Democrat, and AOC, a progressive Democrat.
But all three of them are saying very similar things, okay, good, but yeah,
we're hurt dog and federal government, you need to help, you need to help, right?
Well, where were we when Texas was saying the same thing?
Let's be honest and fair to everybody, okay?
So but now it's New York's issue in some other states.
Let's go help them.
And you know it's bad, not based on the numbers, but
this is the most telltale side, when corporate Democrats like Kathy Hochul and
I would put Eric Adams in that bucket, too,
when those two come out against Biden, that almost never happens.
That is defying authority, right?
And that is not allowed in the Democratic Party.
>> Speaker 2: Well, their political careers are on the line because the anger
in New York is very obvious, right?
I mean, look, I feel like it's a story that has largely been ignored or
downplayed.
And that's the problem that I have with this story overall,
just the lack of interest in what these communities are currently faced with
because their economic situation was already dire with divestment in education,
divestment in certain social programs after the pandemic, obviously,
it takes a while for things to kinda get back to normal.
A lot of people had lost their jobs.
It is already a dire situation.
And then on top of that, New York was not ready.
It did not have the infrastructure in place in order to take in all of these
migrants, right?
And so what they're now dealing with is, okay,
New York City specifically has a right to shelter policy,
meaning anyone who asks for shelter must get the shelter,
which has actually made New York a far more desirable place for
these migrants to go to.
So the dominant narrative so far had been,
Texas Governor Greg Abbott is the one who's busing all of these people or
sending all of these people to New York City, but he actually accounts for
a small fraction of the migrants who have arrived in New York City.
So I want to take you to graphic five here because as the New York Times reports,
after crossing the southern border,
thousands have made their way to New York with the help of officials in Texas.
Governor Greg Abbott has sent thousands in a campaign to provoke outrage and
force the federal government to tighten border security.
So he has done that to an extent.
However, Abbott's buses account for
only a small fraction of the people who have arrived.
El Paso, a Democrat led city,
has also sent new arrivals to New York at the migrants request,
officials there have said, and some people have made their own way.
So again, because of the fact that New York City has this right to shelter
policy, obviously if you're coming here as an asylum seeker,
as you're going through the asylum process, as you're essentially waiting
to have the ability to work here legally, you're gonna need a place to stay.
And so naturally,
people are going to gravitate toward parts of the country that have these types of
policies that are far more friendly to individuals in need of shelter.
>> Speaker 6: Yes, and guys, when we all feel the, quote, unquote, pain,
as in budgetary pain, overfilled schools, overfilled shelters, etc, we have to
work together, left wing and right wing, to figure out, what's the right number?
What is the right policy?
We can't just say, yeah, let them all in and
let the border states deal with them or don't let anybody in, right?
No, let's have a rational policy and then let's figure out how
to sort immigrants and by the way, fund a lot more judges.
And I've been saying this for years and years, during the Trump years,
during the Biden years, you need an army of judges so that people who don't have
documents aren't sitting around for three or four years.
And because if they do, one, it's a giant problem for them, but two,
it's also a giant problem for us.
So if they can't get gainful employment,
they're gonna have to eat and they've got family.
>> Speaker 2: That's right.
>> Speaker 6: So they're gonna have to do something and
you don't want that to fester.
Some of that could be incredible positive energy.
And some of that could be negative energy.
>> Speaker 2: Well, let's keep it real.
A lot of them end up working in the, I don't know what it's called,
unofficial market.
Basically, instead of taking jobs where they're documented and where they have at
least some ability to protect themselves through our system, they end up working
kind of underground economy, that's the word I was looking for.
They work in the underground economy where exploitation is common, abuse is common.
So a lot of these migrants end up getting abused as a result of that.
I don't know who is advising the Biden administration about how expediting
the workers visas is a bad idea because it's gonna encourage more people to come
to the United States.
But either way, there are currently so
many people in the country already in desperate need of workers visas.
And if you don't give it to them, what are they supposed to do for
three to four years?
And I get that look, some just say deport them all, but
based on our laws, we can't do that, okay?
So members of Congress, really this falls on them and their inability to
just do their jobs and actually pass legislation, immigration reform.
The last time there was any conversation about immigration reform was back in 2014
and that failed.
That fell apart.
>> Speaker 6: No, guys, you feel like it can't be real, can it?
I mean, at least that's how I felt when I was younger.
That the people in power don't really know what they're doing and
they've set up these super incomplete and
inefficient systems where tons of problems arise and then they never fix them.
They never go back and go, well, not only did we blow it in the beginning, but
I see those giant glaring errors, man, we just won't fix them.
That seems unconscionable, right?
>> Speaker 2: But we'll complain about that.
>> Speaker 6: Yeah, but the government is broken.
The only thing that ever passes is corporate subsidies and
corporate tax cuts.
I've said this for 20 straight years now.
I formed Wolf Pack to fight against it, but if you don't fix money in politics,
nothing ever gets fixed because the only thing that ever passes is subsidies
to corporations, and this stuff festers and festers.
Guys, it's a giant problem for those immigrants.
They're lying on the streets.
They're gonna get abused.
The underground markets are terrible in a lot of ways, etc.
But some of them will turn to crime because they're not gonna have any
choices, if they can't work and they have to feed their families, right?
Okay, then we're gonna have a bigger problem.
Is it because they're naturally bad morals or criminals?
Of course not.
Undocumented immigrants commit crime at half the rate of natural born
Americans, right?
But if you put them in a situation where they have no choice, not only will some of
that arise from some percentage, but then it'll anger everyone else and it'll
make them turn more against immigrants, and it creates a vicious cycle,
especially with right wing media waiting out there for, one or two bad crimes.
>> Speaker 2: No, it's exactly right.
>> Speaker 6: And then they're gonna focus on them and pretend that that's what
represents all immigrants that have ever come into the country.
So it's a bit of a time bomb and let's go.
Let's go, Biden.
Do whatever you need to do.
Guys, one last thing, sorry, Ana.
He's got to start doing everything by executive order because these lunatics in
the House, they're never gonna allow him to pass anything.
They can't even fund the very, very basic bare minimum of the government.
To think that they would do immigration reform is inconceivable.
>> Speaker 2: So let me actually get to that real quick,
because I think it's important to kinda talk about how Biden is now going
in the way of Donald Trump with Donald Trump's immigration policies.
Let's go to the last graphic here.
The Biden administration also announced a new asylum policy that disqualified most
people from applying for asylum if they have crossed into the United States
without either securing an appointment at the official port of entry or proving that
they had sought legal protection in another country along the way.
The policy was struck down by a federal judge in July, but was upheld on appeal
while legal challenges to the policy work their way through the courts.
So it's not just Biden being able to do things unilaterally,
much like Trump did, to be quite honest with you, it's that our judicial system
also sometimes gets in the way of actually implementing some of the policies that
could at least temporarily alleviate some of these issues.
But it is a band-aid on a gushing wound, and
it's really important to keep that in mind.
If you just rely on the President of the United States passing
policy through executive order,
it's just a flimsy way of dealing with a much deeper issue that we have here.
We are in desperate need of reform that needs to be done through Congress, and
Congress is broken.
So the next time you hear any lawmaker complain about the migrant crisis,
ask them why they're on X, okay?
Complaining about it when they're literally United States representatives or
Senators who could actually do something about it.