Mayor Eric Adams has declared a state of emergency in New York City over the “humanitarian crisis” caused by an influx of asylum seekers from Texas. “This is a humanitarian crisis that started with violence and instability in South America and it is being accelerated by American political dynamics,” he said. He continued, “Thousands of asylum seekers are have been bused into New York City and simply dropped off without notice, coordination or care. And more are arriving every day. This crisis is not of our own making but one that will affect everyone in this city.”

The mayor went on to say that since April, about 17,000 asylum seekers have been bused to the city. That has pushed the total number of people in NYC shelters to a new record of 61,000 people. These are people who can’t legally work, who have school age children and some of whom need medical care. New York has done what it can to accommodate them all but as the mayor explained, “extending that care has come at a great cost to our city and our people.” “It is straining the ability of our city to provide care for New Yorkers in need and is burning through our city’s budget,” he added.

Adams said the crisis would cost the city a billion dollars by the end of this year. He said New York’s “functional and compassionate system” was being “exploited by others for political gain.” “We have not asked for this,” he said.

After praising the compassionate response of NYC thus far, he got to the point: “This is unsustainable.” “We are reaching the outer limit of our ability to help,” he said. And that’s why he announced this state of emergency.

At this point, you may be thinking to yourself, as I am, how do you think it feels to be in Texas and Arizona for the last two years? Mayor Adams is offering all the compassion and support to these asylum seekers showing up on buses but absolutely none to his fellow Americans in southern states who are dealing with many times the number of migrants he has been dealing with.

Adams attempts to claim that the problem here is lack of coordination. “If our city had had coordination or even just cooperation from any of the states sending buses or more support from our partners then maybe we could have budgeted, staffed and allocated resources for these asylum seekers, but we didn’t get the support and information we asked for and now New York City is being asked to bear far more than it’s share of this national crisis.”

Is that true? We’ve had more than a million asylum seekers enter the US since the start of the Biden administration. Is 17,000 of them more than New York’s share? The city has more than 8.3 million people out of a total US population of 330 million. That’s about 2.5% of the total. A comparable 2.5% of one million asylum seekers would be about 25,000 people. So just using some back of the envelope math, I don’t think New York has exceeded its share of the crisis yet, though it may bet there in another month. Even if they do exceed it, does Adams think that’s anything compared to what border cities in Texas and Arizona are dealing with?

Adams plan to deal with this, in part, is to make sure migrants are bused to other cities besides NYC. “We need a coordinated effort to move asylum seekers to other cities in this country to ensure everyone is doing their part,” he said.

That sounds reasonable to me but it can’t be overlooked that Mayor Adams and all of the other blue city mayors around the country weren’t interested in sharing the burden until the burden came to their doorstep. They were content to sit back while the Biden administration downplayed the border crisis as a “challenge” they could successfully manage. Now that they are having to bear some of that burden themselves it’s definitely a crisis.

We’re going to hear from a lot of angry progressives repeating their mantra that “the cruelty is the point” with regard to the busing. But that’s wrong. The point is to create exactly the cry of uncle that Mayor Adams just made. To made asylum cities far from the border grasp just how expensive and unmanageable the crisis really is. That’s the point of the buses. And it seems Mayor Adams is starting to get it though he’s still blaming the problem on the governors and mayors chartering the buses and not on the president who is in charge of managing immigration.

Some of the buses headed to NYC haven’t been coming from Gov. Abbott, they’ve been coming from Oscar Leeser, the Democratic Mayor of El Paso. Leeser said of the asylum seekers who have been overwhelming his city, “The people are not coming to El Paso, they’re coming to America.” That’s exactly right and we can only hope that once these blue city mayors become more aware of the burden the current system represents they’ll demand their president do something about it.

Here’s Mayor Adams’ full statement: